


The Good Place

by spn_j2fan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Altered Mental States, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:50:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spn_j2fan/pseuds/spn_j2fan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The brothers wander this new Earth as the world rebuilds itself. And now, forty years later, their appearance unchanged and unchanging, their journey continues. They help when they can, survive as they must, and run when trouble finds them. Oakville should be just another settlement, but Sam and Dean find acceptance there, even friendship. Is this the place where they can finally settle down, or will they have to wait for The Good Place after all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com)
> 
> Artwork by the fantastic [staysthecourse](http://staysthecourse)
> 
> Many thanks to the lovely and incredibly patient [arliss](http://arliss) for the beta.

**The Good Place**

**Chapter One**

[Master Post on lj](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/24113.html)

They had been walking for hours, since the first light of day, and the heat and humidity were getting to Dean. He kept going though, leading the way, knowing that Sam would follow, never asking for a break. Sam never needed one. Or at least if he did, the need came long after Dean had given up on the day’s travels and spread his blanket on the ground.

The path was an easy one to traverse today—fairly smooth with a speckling of old asphalt patches wide enough to have been a highway _before_ —so they’d made better time than on other days. Dean needed to refill his canteen and check on Sam’s, so when the sudden scent of fresh water beckoned him, he veered off the path. Soon, he parted the hanging branches of side-by-side weeping willows and spotted a pond just beyond them. On the far side of the pond stood one of the rare white willows they encountered from time to time. He looked around at the familiar terrain—it hadn’t changed much in the fifteen years since they had passed through here before. The trees just a little taller, the underbrush just a little thicker. This was Mississippi, he thought, or at least where Mississippi used to be.

Dean sank down at the side of the still pool and swirled his fingers in it, testing for purity. Sam didn’t hesitate though; he fell forward and sucked in the quenching liquid.

“Not so fast, Sammy,” Dean scolded. He pulled at the tails of Sam’s shirt and yanked him away from the edge. “It might not be good.”

“It’s good, Dean, and I’m thirsty.” Sam reached forward and scooped up another handful, offering it to his brother. “Taste it.”

Dean leaned over and sniffed. “Seems okay,” he said, pushing the proffered hand back toward his brother. “Go ahead, Sam.”

“You,” Sam insisted, shoving it forward again and frowning when the water sloshed out and disappeared into the soil.

“I got a canteen for that,” Dean insisted. He propped himself on one elbow and reached over the gentle slope to dip the metal container beneath the water.

Sam slapped at the bubbles that rose to the surface.

Neither said a word while Sam slurped down handful after handful of the clear water. The ends of his hair dangled in the pond as he leaned precariously forward. Dean filled both canteens. It was a few minutes later, when Dean’s thirst was quenched and the sun sat low in the sky that Dean made his decision. “We’ll stay here for the night,” he said.

“Why?” Sam asked, water dribbling down his chin and dousing his plaid shirt. “We’re almost to the settlement, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “But one night won’t hurt us. And I like this place. I remember it.”

“From _before_?” Sam asked. His eyes were wide, and he crawled closer to his brother.

Dean snorted. “What do you know of _before_? You can’t even remember last week.”

“I remember lots of things,” Sam insisted. “I remember the man who drove us places. And I remember the black car.”

Dean huffed again. It was years after The End before Dean stopped thinking about his car almost every day, and it was one of the few things Sam still remembered. Dean didn’t think he would know how to drive it now even if he found it intact, and a smooth road suddenly appeared before his eyes. “The man? That’s what you remember? The man was Dad, and he died a long time ago. Told me to take care of you if I needed to. I sure messed that up.”

Sam tilted his head and stared, only moving when his attention was drawn away by a skittering sound in the brush. “If we’re stayin’ here tonight, I’m gonna catch us dinner,” he whispered, rising silently to his knees and standing in one smooth movement. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Dean grumbled to himself, before calling out, “No powers, Sam!” His brother had already disappeared into the foliage. Dean rolled out his worn blanket and lay down, hands cradling the back of his head to protect it from the rough terrain. He liked this blanket; it reminded him of one of the first settlements they’d encountered in the after. The people had been warm and accepting there, happy to have a little extra help, and thrilled to learn something about time. It was so long ago now that his blanket was worn thin and the edges were frayed. It still offered warmth though, and he was glad it had been in his duffel when they fled. Again.

Sam’s blanket was better. It was checkered in red and green. Red was a color that still evaded most weavers. They learned to use blues early in the years, greens a short time later. But few settlements had reliable red dyes, or fabrics that color that lasted through more than a handful of washings.

Those people had liked Sam, appreciated his sacrifice. Offered him their best. But now, after all the years, it was as though people had forgotten what Sam had done, what Sam tried to do, and worried more about what he might be capable of doing now.

There was still a hint of daylight left and Dean closed his eyes against it, welcoming the dwindling heat upon his skin. “Just find us something small. We don’t need a deer.” Dean finished on a whisper, it didn’t really matter what he said, Sam could hunt, was damn good at it, and would bring back whatever he found.

Dean kept his eyes closed and tried to relax. That task had become much more difficult for him _after_. His thoughts often overwhelmed him. Sometimes they even woke him, leaving him sweaty and shaking in the middle of the night.

Dean remembered the battle of Armageddon. Sam didn’t. Dean remembered trying to reason with Sam, with Lucifer actually, and when that had proved useless, he remembered calling out to Michael. He sank to his knees and begged. He was the chosen vessel, and he wouldn’t let Adam take his place, or let Earth suffer from an inferior, weakened archangel.

It happened in a grungy downtown Detroit district. In that abysmal place where he’d lost all other hopes, he’d still believed that good could defeat evil; that heaven could triumph over hell. However he phrased it, however he rationalized it, in the end it was a matter of simple body mechanics, he sank to his knees after Lucifer vanished, embodied within Sam, and begged Michael to take him, to use him, and to leave him whole when he was through, as he’d promised. And when the battle ended, Michael had been true to his oath. But in Dean’s hurry to avert the end of time, he missed one thing. He forgot to ask that Sam be returned intact as well.

So Dean remembered, and Sam didn’t.

Dean remembered the battle waging across the earth and skies, the air crackling overhead, bolts of lightning scorching their path, and the Heavenly Host howling in both outrage and encouragement. And self-righteousness. He still felt the wings heavy on his back and the spear in his hand. He could see the cities crumbling into dust as the Earth succumbed and huge fissures carved the world into jagged pieces, and the fiery bursts from above separated them with boiling water. Farmlands burned in his wake, and in Sam’s, and ash rose in the air as they tumbled and fought across continents and seas. For ages, it seemed, but it all happened in a day. One day. That was all it took to demolish the world.

He remembered leading his brother—Michael’s brother—to the Lake of Fire, to Gehenna. And he remembered fluttering those dark, weighty wings into a stall, opening his arms and dropping his sword, offering false hope to his fallen sibling, and seeing momentary relief in Sam’s eyes before Michael drove his spear so deep into the Morning Star’s heart that it penetrated his brother’s chest, grinding grotesquely across Sam’s scapula and springing out between the joins of Lucifer’s wings.

That was the end of the battle. Dean tumbled onto the sand, himself again, and watched helplessly as his brother fell through the steam and flames, and into the fiery lake. Into the depths of Gehenna, from whence no soul should arise, not even the devil. Garish black wings floated across its entire expanse. Lucifer never emerged, but Sam did. He walked out of the tempest bone dry and dropped into his brother’s arms.

Dean had closed his eyes, thanking Michael and God for sparing his brother. Until Sam spoke.

“What are we doing here, Dean?” Sam asked, wrapping his arms around his brother so tightly that Dean could not suck in a breath. Sam turned his gaze toward the seething, sullied lake. He released his grip on his brother and picked up a handful of sand, watching intently as the granules trickled out between his fingers and blended in with the rest on the shore. “Where are we?”

That was the last time Dean gave God, or anyone else, thanks or asked for assistance.

 

Most people, when they discovered who Sam and Dean were, told Dean that it was God’s strength, God’s favor, that protected him, that gave him the edge and made him victorious. That saved the world and renewed it. But Dean gave up that theory on the edge of that brown, brewing lake. He still believed that it was Sam trapped inside during the battle, Sam awake and in just enough control to slow the devil down. So even if no one else believed in his brother, Dean did.

“Missed it!” Sam called out from the brush. “I gotta go farther.”

“Don’t wander too far,” Dean said. He didn’t raise his voice; Sam could hear him. “It’s almost dark.”

“Okay,” Sam hollered. Dean shook his head. No one could hunt successfully making that much noise, no one but Sam.

There was a new beginning after Armageddon. Most people still called it that: The Beginning. But Dean would always refer to it as The End. The first year, the Earth was cloaked in darkness. Ash spread through the air, clogging the sky and settling slowly to shroud what little land remained in a thick, silky layer, soft and shifting underfoot. Darkness reigned and the weather changed violently from day to day, hour to hour. There were no seasons. The waters boiled one day, spewing sooty steam into the hazy air, and froze solid the next. No plants or wild animals survived the battle, and the smattering of humans left alive had nothing to eat but what they scavenged from demolished homes and businesses. The only lights that shone were flashlight beams, dimming as their batteries failed, and the tiny fires that flecked the land.

Dean spent that year travelling across the charcoaled earth, his brother trailing closely behind. Mostly, they sailed. The waters were unpredictable when they watched from land, but always calmed when they were afloat, no matter the size of their craft. Dean learned to follow the patterns of the waves, and his brother rowed. Sam never tired; Dean tried to take his turn, but it always ended with him giving it up and Sam puffing out his chest as he settled at the oars… glowing at his success in the task.

The first year was hopeless, desolate, sad. The few humans they encountered were lost and afraid. Dean had nothing to offer them, except time. He always knew the date. And then the light returned, dividing the cycle into day and night. People began to rejoice.

Dean didn’t. He washed his brother’s hands after Sam played in the soil. He talked softly to Sam about _before_ as he plucked the tiny splinters of glass, or shards of pottery or plastic from his palms and fingers, after whatever new artifact Sam had unearthed shattered in his grasp.

Dean watched over his brother.

In the second year, the ash cloud lifted, dispersed, and there was blue overhead again. The air was clean and fresh, smelling of life and renewal. When they encountered small groups of humans, some said the clearing sky was a sign of forgiveness from heaven. They touched their foreheads with the remaining ash in remembrance of worse times. Smiles returned to faces and the people moved into enclaves to share their supplies and celebrate their survival.

Dean didn’t think of forgiveness. He thought of fire and heat, the razing of land and the loss of life. He thought of the destruction he’d left behind. He never saw Bobby again, or any other hunter. As far as he knew, there was nothing left to hunt.

During the third year, Dean’s watch stopped turning. He continued counting the days by the setting of the sun. He scratched each new dawn onto his forearm, and started on the other when a month had passed. By the time he was ready to start anew, the first arm would be healed and ready again.

No marks lasted long on his skin, no matter how deeply etched. Dean had discovered his new ability early in their travels when he stumbled on some loose gravel and skidded a dozen feet down the side of a sheer crag, shredding the skin along the length of his left thigh as he dropped. A pointed sapling gouged in deeply near his groin. Bright red blood spewed out with each beat of his heart, documenting his drop down the steep, rocky wall, until he came to a stop on a ledge so splinter-thin it shouldn’t have been able to support him. Miraculously, it did.

He drew in ragged, jittery gasps when his feet made contact, and his knees buckled from the speed of his descent—and blood loss. It was all he could do to maintain his purchase. He scrabbled for a handhold along the side of the cliff as his toes teetered precariously on the six-inch shelf of rock—all that kept him from falling farther, and battering his body on the narrow canyon walls all the way down to the tiny stream below. Even as he struggled for survival, clutching at rough protrusions of rock with raw and bloodied fingertips, and slowly making his way back up the vertical cliff, he was convinced that this injury would be his end. He was certain that he was dying, and leaving Sam alone on this new Earth. But even as he pulled himself up and over the canyon ledge, the bleeding had stopped. Dean found his brother on his knees, breathing hard and mumbling to himself, and struggled closer to offer what comfort he could in his current state. In a matter of days, Dean’s skin was healed and new.

Dean pressed deeply into his flesh each morning, not just to carve a new slash, but also to reinforce the old ones, and to ensure that his marks would last long enough for him to place a new gash beside them on the next dawn.

As they travelled during that third year, the waters dispelled and the landmasses grew in size. Sometime in April, according to his calculations, plants began to sprout and search for the sky. Grass became plentiful and flowers bloomed. The people harvested fresh food for the first time since The End, and they began to cultivate the land. They celebrated their first harvests in the fall, and prayed.

Dean didn’t. He didn’t pray anymore, had nothing to be thankful for, not in a long time.

Sam came barreling through the brush, a dead fox clutched between his huge hands, its head lolling to one side and bobbling as Sam jogged. “Your favorite, Dean!” He exclaimed.

“Yeah, thanks Sam,” Dean grinned. It wasn’t his favorite, not even close. The fur was thick, the skin clung tightly to the muscle, and the meat was almost always tough. He preferred rabbit, or even squirrel.

“Start a fire,” Dean said, putting his hands behind his head again and crossing his feet. “It’ll roast well if the fire’s not too hot.”

Sam liked having tasks to complete, and Dean was happy to oblige.

During the fourth year following The End, the moon and stars returned. A few speckles of light at first, a sparse spattering across the night sky, but by December the moon shone brightly on her designated shifts, and the stars covered the expanse on the nights that the moon did not reign.

Dean took Sam outside on those nights to stare at the sky and wish upon falling stars. Sam could spot them before their descent even began.

Dean always had the same wish.

It wasn’t until the fifth year, when the few remaining supplies from the before were exhausted, and most people had begun eating only the food they harvested, that fish appeared in the waters and birds spotted the sky. People learned to make nets and poles again, and fishing returned to the human skill set.

Sam excelled at fishing. When they reached a new settlement, people applauded his skill—until they witnessed it for themselves. He could lift a hand in the air, and fish rose above the surface and tumbled onto the land, like they were begging to be caught. Like they were calling out, “Pick me! Pick me, I’m the best!”

People were afraid of what they didn’t understand. And Sam’s abilities fit neatly into that category.

It was sometime in the sixth year that large animals began to wander the lands. Dean witnessed the first new human births that year. People had become optimistic, choosing to expand their compounds and start families.

Sam liked the babies most of all. They made him smile and laugh. Most of the time he remembered not to pick them up, but he watched them and sometimes reached out a finger to caress a silky soft cheek. Babies would look up at him and giggle. The older ones liked to grab his nose when he leaned in close. They weren’t afraid.

That sixth year was the last year of changes. And now, thirty-four years later, they still wandered this new Earth, he and Sam. It made sense, they had always been drifters.

They entered new communities and found work, left when people discovered who they were, or when trouble found them. Stories abounded and were never far behind them. The first time that someone called him “the prince of light,” or looked scathingly upon his brother, Dean gathered their meager belongings and moved on. Dean supposed they could stay outside of society, it didn’t take much to keep them alive, but sometimes he just needed someone to talk to. A sip of whatever homebrew the community had to offer. An ogle at the curves of a woman.

Fat dripped onto the fire and sizzled, bringing Dean up to sitting. “Looks good, Sam,” he said.

Sam grinned at him. “I did it right. I skinned it and cleaned it out real good.”

Dean nodded and smiled.

“So tomorrow?” Sam started. Dean waited a minute for his brother to finish his thought. “We gonna see people tomorrow? Kids?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “But you gotta be careful. You remember, right?”

Sam frowned. He poked a stick into the embers beneath his roast. “Remember?”

Dean leaned toward him, rubbed a hand across Sam’s cheek. It was already a bit scratchy. “You remember not to touch, right? Not to move anybody, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded vigorously. Dean’s head hurt just watching. “I’ll be good, Dean. I promise, I’ll be good.”

“I know you will, Sam. I know you will.” Dean repeated the same phrase he said before entering each new community.

Late that night, the last cinders of their fire dying out, Sam slipped in next to Dean and dragged his own blanket over to cover them. “I’ll be good,” he whispered as he hugged his brother close. “I promise.”

Dean sank into his brother’s embrace, appreciating his strength, and nuzzled at Sam’s neck as he whispered the familiar refrain: “I know you will, Sammy. I know you will.”

Sam turned Dean easily, butting his chest against his brother’s back. Dean felt the arousal press against him.

“This okay, Dean?” Sam whispered in his ear.

Dean wriggled backward, earning a pleasured groan from his brother. “Yeah, Sam. It’s okay.”

Dean was tired, and in some instinctual way, Sam always knew when he was, knew not to ask for too much. Instead, he lowered his pants as Dean did the same, and satisfied himself between Dean’s thighs, reaching a hand around to match his rhythm on Dean’s cock. He cradled Dean’s head on his other arm.

Dean let his eyes fall shut, enjoying the sensation.

This was another task at which Sam excelled. When they were alone and intimate, Sam was confident and self-assured. This new relationship between them had never happened in the before, and it didn’t happen right away in the after. It developed and evolved as their journey on this new Earth trudged endlessly forward. Dean reveled in these interludes. These self-confident vignettes were the only remaining vestiges of the Sam from _before_ , and they were the only times when Dean could close his eyes and feel safe.

 

“Yeah, just like that,” Dean moaned, thrusting into his brother’s fist and squeezing his thighs together as he pushed back to provide the friction Sam needed.

Sam’s pace picked up. “Dean, I’m gonna…”

“ ‘S okay, Sam,” Dean huffed. He was panting now. “J-just a little more and I’m right there with you.”

Sam’s hand squeezed just a bit tighter. That, and the increased speed, were all Dean needed.

“Ahhh!” Dean groaned as his brother surged forward with those last few stuttering thrusts, the ones that signaled his impending release. “Yeah, Sam, come on,” he grunted, teeth clenching as he let go and allowed his own orgasm to overcome him.

A few minutes passed, both their hearts slowing, before they bothered to roll over so that Sam’s untarnished blanket was beneath them. If they needed more warmth, they could turn Dean’s over and cover up.

“Dean?” Sam whispered.

“Yeah, Sam?”

“Tell me about the place we’re gonna go.”

“Tomorrow? It’s just another settlement, Sammy,” Dean mumbled, drowsing in the afterglow of his climax. “Get some sleep so you’re ready in the morning.”

“Not that place,” Sam whined, snuggling closer to Dean and pulling his brother in tight with one muscled arm. “The good place. The place we’re gonna go someday.”

Dean turned around in Sam’s embrace, eyed his brother as best he could in the remaining light of the fire. He swiped the sweaty bangs away from Sam’s forehead. “You know that story, Sammy. Better than I do by now, I figure.”

“You tell it better,” Sam smiled down at his brother, dimples deep and eyes sparkling, exhibiting none of the post-orgasmic lethargy Dean was experiencing.

“Okay, okay,” Dean patted Sam’s chest—just a couple inches from his own. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice like he was telling a fairytale. “Someday we’re going to a good place, Sammy. A place where we can settle down and stay forever.”

“And nobody’s gonna care about my powers, tell that part Dean,” Sam interjected.

Dean chuckled, he was rousing a bit. “Yeah, Sammy. Nobody’ll care about what you can do. Mostly it will just be us, just you and me, but when we see other people, they’re all gonna be friends. People we know. And you’re gonna remember them all.”

“And the dog. We’re gonna have a dog, right Dean? Tell me that part.”

“Any dog you want,” Dean said. He patted his brother’s chest one more time and turned around, pushing his back into the familiar warmth of Sam’s chest. He closed his eyes as those strong arms enfolded him again. “It will be paradise, Sam. Whatever you want, you’ll get.”

“Paradise,” Sam whispered, testing the word on his tongue like it was the first time. “I want that.”

“You’ve earned it, buddy. Trust me,” Dean said. “Now go to sleep, we’re gonna have a long day tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Dean,” Sam mumbled against his brother’s neck. “See you in paradise.”

“I hope so,” Dean mouthed. He didn’t dare say the words aloud. No matter how softly spoken, Sam would hear them.


	2. Chapter Two

**The Good Place**

**Chapter Two**

[Master Post on lj](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/24113.html)

The sun was rising steadily in the morning sky when Dean woke. He scrambled up to sitting and looked around for his brother. “Sam!” he called out.

“Over here, Dean,” Sam replied immediately, and Dean tracked his brother to the edge of the pond. Sam’s right hand was high in the air and a couple dozen fish flopped onto the bank. He grabbed two of the biggest in one hand. They were still thrashing and doing their best to beg for his attention. The fish never knew what hit them until they landed in the fire. Sam shoved the rest back into the pond with his other hand, like Dean had taught him. “There’s lots. I just took what we needed. Promise. Perch, your favorite.”

Dean smiled and nodded. He preferred trout.

After breakfast, Dean pulled out his razor, the one he kept tucked deep in his duffel, and stropped it on the length of leather he rolled tight and saved for just this purpose. He didn’t have enough soap left to lather up them both, so he sat Sam down on a flattened boulder next to the water and tilted his face from side to side, lathering first, then steadily removing the stubble with a well-practiced hand. In all the years since The End, Dean had learned a few things. One of them was that Sam was much less intimidating when clean-shaven.

Sam never objected. He sat still and let his face be moved as Dean saw fit. He pulled his upper lip taut when Dean told him to, and even held still as Dean scraped the sharpened blade along the length of his throat.

They put out the fire and headed back toward the asphalt-dimpled path. Dean slung his duffel over his shoulder and checked Sam’s gear. The canteen was hooked on his belt, as it should be, and he carried his duffel between his left thumb and forefinger. Dean both marveled at, and worried about, his brother’s strength.

“It’s gonna be good this time, right Dean?” Sam asked after a half-hour or so of silence. He never could go long without conversation.

Yeah, it’s gonna be good,” Dean agreed. He batted a handful of flies away from his face; spat one out. The sun hadn’t burned away the worst of the southern spring humidity yet, and the insects basked in it. This was one remnant of the before he would have been happy to have lost forever. “As long as you remember the rules, it’s gonna be good.”

“I’ll remember,” Sam promised, his voice dropping to a whisper. He glanced around. “It’s too quiet, Dean. Tell me a story.”

Dean smirked. He rucked his duffel higher up on his shoulder—he couldn’t hold it between two fingers like Sam could. The weight of his load took its toll on him and he shifted it frequently—and began a tale. It didn’t matter which one. He’d told them all countless times.

“Once upon a time, there was a grumpy old man named—”

“Bobby!” Sam chimed in. A grin spread across his face like he knew.

“Yeah,” Dean said. He caught his brother’s eyes. “You remember him?”

Sam looked at him quizzically. “I remember that story, yeah. Can you make up a different one this time?”

“Sure, buddy,” Dean deflated. “How about I tell you one about the _other_ grumpy old man and the Johnnie Walker Blue?”

Sam grinned, and that was all it took to get Dean started. For a man who spent his first thirty plus years of life not saying much at all, Dean had sure learned how to fill the silence.

The heat had settled in, thick and acrid, as afternoon came upon them, made worse by the still air. At least the insects seemed to vanish this time of day, one good reason to appreciate his sweat-soaked clothing. Dean figured they might just head up north again soon. Maybe after this settlement. Summer was just around the corner, so it was a good time of year for the long trip. Maybe they would head toward the northwest this year. They hadn’t travelled that way in awhile.

The path they were on remained the same, but their surroundings changed slowly over the hours. First the trees thinned and then the soil became sandier. Soon, Dean could see structures far in the distance. 

“Ready, Sammy?” Dean asked as they approached a settlement a couple hours later.

“Ready,” Sam replied instantly, a grin on his face. He took a step forward and tested the path with one large boot.

There was a time when Sam objected to the nickname. Many times, actually. Dean shook his head. Those times were gone.

“You remember the rules, right?” Dean prodded.

Sam nodded.

“Tell me.”

Sam eyed his brother, his brow furrowed. His head dipped low, wavering slightly from side to side. “I’m sorry, Dean. I tried to remember. I remembered and remembered all night. But…I forgot.” He swiped his hair away from his face and tucked it behind an ear.

Dean shook off the familiarity of that gesture. It was simply an ingrained motion, he told himself, not a revival of his Sam. Dean had given up that notion years ago. Decades ago.

“No touching the babies,” Dean began, reciting by rote. His foot sank into the mud between the asphalt patches, and he held onto Sam’s shoulder to steady his gait. He shook the thick sludge off his boot. “No moving people. No moving things!”

Sam nodded. He walked effortlessly across the terrain. He never missed a step, even when he wasn’t looking down.

“Tell me,” Dean insisted.

“No touching the babies. No moving things. I got it, Dean. I promise. I’ll be good.”

“I know you will,” Dean replied. He reached a hand up and squeezed the back of his brother’s neck. “You always do your best.” He hesitated for a moment, looked back along the path they’d travelled during the day. “You remember how to get back to that pond, Sammy?”

Sam turned his head toward his brother, his feet still never missing a step. “Yeah, I can get back. Do we need to?”

“Nah.” Dean shook his head. “”But if things go bad, and I tell you to run, that’s where you go, okay?”

“Sure, Dean,” Sam said, lines furrowing his brow again. “I thought this was going to be a nice place.”

“It is,” Dean said. He patted his brother on the shoulder and grinned as best as he could. “It’s just a back-up plan. If there’s trouble, you run as fast as you can to the pond. And you wait for me there. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

“Alright,” Sam agreed. “The pond. Trouble. Back-up plan. I’ll remember, I promise.”

* * *

It was like an instant makeover when they passed the hand-lettered sign indicating they had entered “Oakville Settlement.” Everything was smooth and clean, the roughness of the path and the wildness of the terrain stopped at the gate. It even had the population scribbled on a wooden slat: 5,571. It was one of the largest colonies they had passed through. That was good for him and his brother. It meant there were more people to blend in among. 

The path of compacted dirt was smooth under their feet and opened onto a wide boulevard. Simple shops with crudely carved and painted wooden signs waving in the wind lined each side, and flowerbeds divided it down the middle. Tall trees sprouted up between the buildings and hung over the road, providing shade. Those tall trees reminded Dean of all the years he’d been wandering this new Earth. It took a lot of years to grow them that magnificent.

Dean looked down a small turn-off to the left and saw a narrower path lined with tiny log homes on both sides, dozens down that one path alone. He jogged to the edge of the boulevard, tugging his brother along with him when the sound of hooves came upon them suddenly: A horse and cart. More evidence that humanity was making quick progress.

The man atop tilted his head and smiled in their direction as he drove his two-horse team slowly forward. The cart was filled with boxes of various sizes. Penciled-in labels identified some as, “Margie’s world-famous soaps” and others as, “Miss Pamela’s perfect pickles.” 

Remembering ad campaigns from _before_ , Dean thought using capital letters might drive their point home more thoroughly: "Miss Pamela’s Perfect Pickles.” Give them an edge in the marketplace.

The cart came to a stop a few shops down the path and the man hopped down, grabbing a box of those famous soaps and carrying it inside.

Dean reached in his pocket, his fingers coming to rest on the few scraps of paper they had earned in the last settlement, and wondered if Springerton currency would do him any good in Oakville. Some communities were more interactive than others, and these two were only a few days apart, by horseback at least.

“I don’t got mine,” Sam said, his eyes wide as he patted down each pocket frantically. “I think I lost mine, Dean.”

“Damn,” Dean swore, swiping a hand across his brow. He must have voiced his concern out loud. He stopped and turned to face his brother, putting a hand on each solid shoulder to curtail his brother’s frenetic search. “Relax, Sam. I got yours too. You think I’m gonna let you carry the cash?”

He tried to smile—hoped it was reassuring—and relaxed when the tension faded from his brother’s shoulders, and Sam offered a smile of his own in return. Those same dimples, that same wide grin and white teeth. But behind them, nothing was the same.

They followed the cart driver into the shop and began looking around. There was an older woman—well, in her late forties or early fifties, more likely, but _older_ by new Earth standards—behind the counter. Her silver-streaked hair was pulled away from her face and gathered into a braid that trailed halfway down her back. And her clothes were simple homespun, a loose, whitish blouse tucked carelessly into a pair of brown dungarees. She offered them a brief smile before returning her attention to the trader.

“I can’t pay that much.” Dean heard her say. Haggling had become the way of the world. “I’ll give you twelve and a batch of my husband’s fermented rice.”

“How’d he manage that?” The trader grinned. “Haven’t seen any of that around here.”

“It’s our own little secret,” she said, winking as she did. “Now, do we have a deal or not?”

“Deal,” the man agreed. The woman offered a handful of currency from the drawer under the counter, and the trader tucked it deep into a pocket before leaving with an even larger crate in his arms.

Dean busied himself studying the contents of each shelf: Foodstuffs on some, household necessities on others.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” The woman asked as she turned the corner on the counter and walked over to join them. Her eyes grew wide and she lowered her voice. “I remember you. My eyes aren’t so good from a distance anymore, but up close, I can see you plain as day.”

She wiped her hand on the leg of her trousers and held it out in greeting. “How are you, Timekeeper? It’s been a long time since you came through here, but you look the same. Both of you.”

The new tension Dean felt building between his shoulder blades and traveling up the back of his neck eased a little with the nickname. This lady was a friendly one. Most who recognized him reached deep into their new beliefs and called him “savior,” or into old myths and legends and labeled him “The Prince of Light.” Both were labels that made him cringe, and leave town even before trouble found them. But “Timekeeper” didn’t bother him so much. Having kept track of time for the past forty years was a feat Dean was immensely proud of. Destroying the world and his brother along with it, was not. 

He accepted her hand. “Dean. My name’s Dean. This is my—. This is Sam.”

Sam hurried to extend his hand, mimicking his brother’s gesture. He flickered his eyes back and forth between his own hand and Dean’s to make sure he was doing it right. Dean nodded reassuringly.

“Beth,” the woman said. A smile crossed her face and she smoothed her hair back with her free hand. “I guess I don’t look the same as I did all that time ago, though. You guys need anything?”

Dean reached into a pocket and drew out his currency, grinning as Sam copied the gesture and came back empty-handed. “This any good here?”

Beth smiled. “You don’t need any money here. Whatever you need, it’s yours.”

Dean closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. He looked toward her again and let his breath out gradually, steadying himself. “Look, Beth. Don’t think we don’t appreciate the offer, but we’ve been around too long not to earn our keep. Gotta have a purpose, you know?” He glanced around the shop’s interior, appraising it, and sighed again. “Sam here, he’s a great fisherman. Probably better than any ten men you have, and he’s a hard worker. He doesn’t talk much unless I’m around, but he’ll listen. He’s strong as an ox, too. So if you need some manual labor, he can do it. We both can. Me? I can do just about any odd job you need done. I’ve done most all of ‘em over the years.”

He paused in case the woman had something to say, but when she didn’t he continued, “In exchange, we could use a place to sleep for a little while, some food, maybe a little cash to spend on necessities and…”

Dean stopped talking when he spotted Sam stepping across the aisle to grab a bottle with a homemade label attached. “You got pop? How’d you get pop?” Sam asked in awe. He lifted the bottle off the shelf and shook it gently, staring at the tiny bubbles that formed and rose to the top. “The man in the car gave us pop. Sometimes when we were real good, he would give us pop.”

“You must have gotten a lot of pop then,” Beth said with a tender smile as she reached up to pat his smooth cheek. She took the bottle from his hand and placed it back on the shelf, grabbing a fresh, unshaken one before Sam’s frown even formed. “Another one of my Clark’s secrets. You want one?”

“Yeah,” Sam breathed out. His smile grew and his dimples deepened.

“How much is it?” Dean interrupted.

“Consider it an advance on your first week’s pay,” Beth replied, popping the top off effortlessly on the edge of the shelf. “I don’t have enough space in my home for you to stay, not since Jesse moved into our place, but you can bunk in the storage room in the back of the shop. There’s plenty of room for you in there. Clark works on the river. He’s in charge of bringing in the catch every day. Sam can help there if he likes.”

Sam nodded vigorously and Beth grinned, handing him the bottle. “You can help me out here, Dean, if that will work for you.”

“Slow down, Sam,” Dean warned when over half the contents of the bottle went down in one slug. He turned back to the woman. “Thanks, Beth. That would work great.”

“Mom!” A high-pitched voice whined from the entryway. “School sucks! Why can’t I just work with Dad?”

A four-and-a-half foot tall terror swept past them and came to an abrupt stop in front of the woman. His clothes were similar to Beth’s, with mismatched buttons down the front instead of neatly tied ribbons. His shaggy brown hair, most of which was hidden beneath an ancient, tattered New York Yankees baseball cap, brushed across his shoulders as he turned to lift a bottle off the shelf for himself.

“Put that down!” Beth commanded, prying the bottle from between his fingers. “No soda until after dinner, and then you can only have one. Jesse, this is Sam, and that man over there is Dean. They’re going to be working with us for a while.”

The boy’s attention finally landed on them. His gaze followed Beth’s pointed finger to Dean first, and then his eyes tracked all the way up to Sam’s face. “You’re tall,” he muttered, his eyes wide.

Sam dropped immediately to his knees, the _thunk_ made Dean cringe. “Hi, Jesse.” He held out his hand just a few inches from his chest in an awkward angle. “I’m Sam. I like your cap.” A grin spread across his face and he tilted his head to the side, assessing the child in his own way.

The boy shook his hand cautiously.

Dean laughed. “Don’t worry, Jesse. Sam’s kind of a kid himself, always has been.”

The boy shook more enthusiastically then. Some of his wariness diminished.

“So what’s so bad about school?” Dean asked. He leaned against the shelf at his side, pleased to find it so sturdy.

“Miss Margie doesn’t know anything!” Jesse opened up immediately upon hearing the question. “She says the world just started forty years ago. Even I know better than that.”

“Miss Margie as in the soap?” Dean asked.

“How’d you know?” The boy asked in wonder.

“I can read, kid,” Dean said. He quirked a brow and held it in the raised position until the boy made eye contact before grinning and shrugging his shoulders. “That’s what happens when you go to school. You just need to learn there. You don’t need to buy into their grand plan.”

Jesse dropped his head, suddenly silent, more like Dean had chewed him out than mildly teased him. Dean frowned; it wasn’t the normal reaction he got from kids Jesse’s age. He was usually pretty good with them.

“Do you have any homework, Jesse?” Beth broke into their dialogue.

“No, ma’am. Finished all of it during history. History’s all bullshit anyway,” Jesse said, his tough façade resurfacing. Dean was happy to hear it.

“Shush!” Beth demanded. “Watch your mouth! Since you don’t have any schoolwork to do, you can take Sam down to the river and introduce him to Cl—, to your Daddy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jesse agreed easily. “Can I go play after that?”

“Sure, just be home for dinner.”

The boy grabbed Sam’s hand with both of his, and tugged him forward until Sam rose to his feet, like they were life-long friends. “Come on, Sam. I’ll show you the ropes.”

“Can I go, Dean?” Sam asked as he was being pulled toward the door, and Dean couldn’t think of doing anything other than nodding his okay.

The door slammed behind them, and Dean was alone with Beth. Sam was out of his sight for the first time since before they had fled from the last settlement. Springerton hadn’t been so friendly.

“Sam, put him down!” Dean remembered warning his brother on their last evening in Springerton. The man had earned his place, stuck to the wall two feet off the ground. He deserved it. But Dean couldn’t let his brother do this. They were done fighting evil. They’d paid their price.

“Dean,” Sam whined. “He’s bad. Very bad.”

“I know he is, Sam. But it isn’t on you to fix it.” Dean held his head steady while letting his eyes wander toward the man who was doing his best to squirm, but finding no success.

“Somebody’s gotta,” Sam insisted. “He stole. He stole something from that lady that she can’t get back. Nobody should steal anymore. Especially not what he stole.”

Sam was right. It was a new world, a more honest one. And no one should be allowed to blemish it. But they weren’t the police. They weren’t even hunters anymore. It wasn’t their job to fix everything.

And the monsters they encountered—a couple more as each new year turned—weren’t supernatural any more. They were human. Red-blooded, flesh-covered, die-when-stabbed-in-the-chest human. There weren’t many yet, but their numbers seemed to be growing.

“Let him down, Sam!” Dean commanded, his voice low and gruff, the tone he knew Sam would obey. And the man slid instantly to the floor in a heap. Before Dean could move forward to help him up, the man regained his feet and ran out of the shack, screaming that the devil still lived.

That was all it took to set them running down the road again. It wasn’t easy keeping his six-and-a-half foot tall brother out of the limelight. It was even harder when Sam revealed his abilities. People didn’t trust anything out of the ordinary in the after. There were no psychics now. No one claimed paranormal powers. There weren’t even magicians trying to dupe people into tossing a coin in their direction. Throwing a grown man across a room and pinning him against a wall, without ever touching him at all, definitely qualified as _extra_ -ordinary.

They’d run that day. Dean barely took time to grab his half-filled duffel, tuck the Colt into his waistband, and pull the tails of his shirt out to cover it. No one had guns now; as far as he knew, the Colt was the only one. There weren’t a lot of people still alive that remembered what one looked like. Nevertheless, Dean did his best to conceal it.

“Ready to go to work?” Beth’s question distracted him from his thoughts.

“Sure.” Dean shook his head, clearing it, and then flashed a lazy smile. “Where do I start?”

“Tell me what day it is,” Beth said. She pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer where the money was, and Dean glimpsed a makeshift calendar on it.

“You tell me,” he smirked. People had regained the skill once he began to spread the knowledge, but most who still recognized him deferred to him nonetheless. 

“It’s May twenty-eighth in the year 2050.”

“Bingo!” Dean cocked a finger in her direction and winked. “You’ve got it.”

“You know people call this 40 AS. _Anno Salutis_ : in the year of salvation.”

“Yeah,” Dean snorted. “I’ve heard it.”

“They say that God sent Michael, the Prince of Light, to protect and defend those who deserved salvation.”

“They’re wrong,” Dean interrupted. “God had nothing to do with it, at least not this time. _Michael_ sent Michael, and it had nothing to do with salvation. He didn’t care about us. He only cared about destroying his brother.”

Beth remained silent for a moment, then looked up cautiously. “Was he successful?”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “He was. He did a damn good job.”


	3. Chapter Three

**The Good Place**

**Chapter Three**

[Master Post on lj](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/24113.html)

“Where do you want it?” Dean grunted. He was bent over at the waist with the fifty-pound sack of grain digging into his shoulder. Sam was much better at these kinds of jobs, but Sam was busy raising fish from the river. Sometimes it didn’t seem fair. Then Dean remembered how Sam gazed at the stars and asked where they came from, how he lost the lunches Dean packed for him, how he had forgotten all that they were in the before, and Dean stopped feeling sorry for himself.

They’d been in Oakville a week already. It was good here, the best Dean had experienced in, well, nearly forty years.

“Dump it over there,” Beth said, tilting her head toward the large pile of similar sacks. “Makes sense, right?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Dean snorted as he leaned forward and let the bag flop off his shoulder and onto the heap. 

Beth offered him a drink before he had a chance to say anything else. 

“What is it?” Dean lifted the glass to eye level and glared skeptically at its cloudy contents.

“This is what Clark skims off the fermented rice. We don’t usually share it.” She patted a stool kitty-corner to the one she was sitting on, and Dean sank down on it gladly.

He rested an elbow on the counter between them and took a big gulp. He coughed and sputtered. “Damn! This is rotgut!”

“Well, I guess you can call it that,” Beth smirked. She took the glass from him and swallowed a mouthful, swiping the moisture off her lips with a sleeve as she slammed it down. “Or I can just call you a lightweight.”

“Oh, hell no!” Dean hissed, grabbing the glass from her hand and chugging the remaining contents, doing his best to suppress the cough that tried to follow. “Never been a lightweight, not gonna start now.” He pounded his chest to hasten the passage. “Whoa!” He breathed out.

“Good, yeah?” Beth laughed. “Just what you need at the end of a long shift.”

“We’re done?” Dean looked up quizzically.

“Yeah, sweetheart. You’re off the clock for the rest of the day.” She turned the sign around on the wooden door, slammed it shut, and moved back to pour a second glass. “You can have this one all to yourself.”

“So,” Beth began.

Dean looked up from studying his glass. It had been awhile since he’d indulged, several settlements back in fact, and he was appreciating the burn. He raised a brow but remained silent, still slouched over his drink.

“So, why don’t you get any older?” Beth asked, the words spoken so quickly that it took Dean a moment to puzzle out the question.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. It wasn’t in the contract.”

He slugged down the rest of the cloudy brew and held out his glass for a refill. He didn’t bother to look up.

Beth obliged. “Can you die?” she whispered.

“Don’t know that either,” Dean confessed. He chuckled softly, swirling the refilled contents of his glass and studying it intently. “I’ve got Sam, so I don’t try.” He pulled the Colt from his waistband and set it gently on the table between them so she knew he wasn’t intending harm. He nodded in its direction. “If anything could do it, it’s this.”

“So you’re not ready to go yet?” Beth kept her questions short and to the point. Dean appreciated that, and trusted her just a little bit more for it.

“Do you remember _before_? Are you old enough to recall any of it?” He asked.

Beth nodded, taking another careful sip. “Some,” she confessed. “Not a lot. So much happened in the after that it pretty much wiped out most of the before. But I remember what that is.” She nodded toward the gun.

Dean caressed the barrel with two fingers, slowly up, and then back down. He traced the pentagram on the handle with his index finger as he spoke. “This one is special. It can kill anything. Well, almost anything.” He sat back for a moment, remembering the last thing he tried to kill with the Colt. Lucifer rose within minutes and tossed Dean against a tree like the sack Dean had just dumped onto the pile. That hadn’t worked out so well.

“The problem is, there’s only one bullet left.”

“So you’re not ready,” Beth concluded.

“Wouldn’t say that.” Dean pressed his lips together, sucked in the liquor that coated them. “Just not ready to go alone.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping from their glasses and glancing at each other awkwardly until Dean couldn’t take it anymore. That was unusual. After all these years of reading people, he was rarely the first to break.

He wasn’t this time either. The front door slammed open, thudding twice on the wall behind it, and a short, wiry man stepped inside. His hair was shorter than Dean’s, cropped close to his scalp on the sides with just enough length on top to reveal the actual color: a deep, chocolate brown. It was a marine-style haircut, but there weren’t any military men around anymore. His scruffy beard with its flecks of gray scattered through it wrecked the military appearance.

“Where is he?!” The man demanded. He folded his arms across his chest and assumed a wide stance. His posture alone was enough to make Dean push his stool back and rise to his feet.

“Settle down, Owen,” Beth chastised, her voice rising for the first time in the week Dean had worked with her. “You don’t get to come in here and make demands. You lost that right six years ago.”

The man growled. Actually growled. His clothes were vastly different from Beth’s. Dean had passed through enough colonies over the years to understand how unique the clothing of each settlement could be. Some continued to rely on the tattered clothing they scavenged, rather than learning to produce their own. Others dug through ruins to find any remnants of technology that might still be reassembled or refurbished. He and Sam had been through communities that had functioning typewriters, aged cash registers even. In what he was pretty sure was Iowa, one settlement had actually managed to assemble a crude but functioning printing press. Sam had run his fingers across the embossed letters, staining them black. In the old Utah, they had seen actual, standing looms. Dean wasn’t sure if they were from _before_ , or if someone had unearthed books about how to build and use them. But he thought they were from _after_ , because they seemed pretty rustic, nothing he suspected would have been manufactured in the old 21st century. It was Utah though, so… But anyway, Dean understood that different communities had different styles.

This man’s pants were stained with mismatched splotches of color to mimic the woodlands to the north. His shirt was gunmetal grey with a spattering of darker smudges across his shoulders and chest that suggested it might at one time have been black. And his boots must have been plundered from a military bunker some time after the earth was renewed. There was no way humans had learned to manufacture steel-toed, speed-laced combat boots yet. It had only been forty years since the end of time, after all. The horse-drawn cart was a huge advancement.

Dean glanced down at his own shabby, worn-out boots, the leather peeling away from the sole. There wasn’t much tread left and he worried about them when he and Sammy ventured off the more well-trodden paths. He had no idea how much longer they would hold up.

“Don’t care,” the man said. He turned his head to Dean and tilted his gaze up until he met Dean’s eyes. “He’s my boy. I’m here now. I wanna see ‘im.”

“Good to see you, too, Owen,” Beth’s tone smoothed out, and she rose slowly to her feet as well, both hands planted firmly on the countertop. “I’m not trying to keep you from visiting, I just want to make sure you’re not trying to steal him away. I won’t give him up, not now.”

“Hell, no!” Owen exclaimed. “I’m here to do some tradin’. I got some good wood, seasoned and ready for buildin’. I’m lookin’ for fish and game—enough to get us through the next winter at least. It’s been too dry up north, and the animals have thinned out, or moved on—there ain’t much left to hunt, and the fishermen are still comin’ back with small catches even this late into the spring. So I'm stockin’ up where there's plenty. Jus’ thought I’d see the boy while I’m here.” He lowered his arms to his sides and assumed a less aggressive stance.

Dean did the same.

“Jesse,” Beth said. “His name’s Jesse. You want to see him, get it right.”

“I know his name!” Owen bellowed. He shook his head and headed for the door. “Jus’ tell me where I can find ‘im. I don’t got too long.”

“This late in the day, he’ll be on the river. That boy loves to fish. And he’s good at it. Follows Clark there any time he can.” Beth’s smile glowed with pride, and Dean couldn’t help but wink at her in support.

Owen mumbled something along the lines of “thanks” and continued on his way, his boots scraping across the wooden floor.

“So,” Dean ventured, once the door slammed again, bouncing on its hinges a couple of times before it came to a rest, and he heard Owen’s dragging footsteps heading down the main boulevard in the direction of the docks. He decided not to wait for the uncomfortable silence. “Jesse isn’t Clark’s?”

Beth chuckled and settled back onto her stool, so Dean did the same. “You get straight to the punch, don’t you?” 

“I guess we’re both good at that,” Dean countered.

Her expression turned more serious before she continued. She nodded. “I guess you could say he’s Clark’s now. Mine, too, for that matter. He’s a good kid, a little rambunctious, but good. I thought I was done with little ones though, until my baby sister passed away and her husband, Owen,” She nodded her head toward the door, “married another woman, an out-of-settlement girl that none of us knew. She wanted a family of her own. That’s what Owen said anyway, when he dropped his four-year-old off at my shop and headed out without looking back. He switched settlements to be with her. Who does that?”

Dean looked up instantly.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

He held up a hand and grinned. “No, it’s okay. Me and Sammy? We’re different. We just don’t fit in.”

“Seems like you do okay,” Beth replied, and paused for a moment. Dean expected it, had been waiting for this sharp woman to ask her questions for nearly a week. She’d done a splendid job so far. “But Sam, he’s not doing so good, is he?”

“Better than he was.” Dean took another gulp. The cloudy brew was going down smoothly now. Familiarity bred…well it bred a little less inclination to resist, as far as Dean was concerned. It made talking easier, or gave him an excuse for doing so, at least. “There was a time when I could barely keep him in line. Sam’s strong, real strong. And for a couple dozen years, maybe longer, it was hard to make him understand just how powerful his touch could be. He’s a lot better now.”

It was nice having someone to talk to, confide in, Dean thought, but he couldn't bring himself to talk about his brother's powers. It was too much, probably more than he could trust anyone with. It was his burden to manage alone. It always would be.

Every night when they set up their blankets on the storage room floor, arranging them close, and each morning when they arose, Dean repeated the same words to his brother: Don’t touch the babies. Don’t move anyone. Don’t move _anything_. So far, Sam seemed to be sticking to the rules. Well, at least no one had rushed in claiming that miracles were occurring, or that the devil was at work in Oakville.

“Was he always…like he is now?”

Dean huffed. “Nah. Sharp as anyone. Brighter than most. Definitely smarter than me.”

“Then what—”

“Mom!” Jesse barged through the door despite the closed sign. That was the second person to ignore it in a matter of minutes. Beth needed a better system.

The same New York Yankees cap sat lopsided on the boy’s head, the brim turned to the side just enough to remind Dean of the early 90’s rappers. “Come outside. Come see what Sam caught!”

Dean rushed to the door, Beth just a few feet behind. He stepped out into the early summer sun and strode straight toward his brother. Sam’s grin was wide and his eyes sparkled. He looked just as happy with his hair plastered to his head with sweat as he did fresh out of a shower. He waved his hand toward the cart with three wooden casks about the size of fifty-gallon oil drums in the back. “Look, Dean!” He exclaimed. Sam nudged his brother’s shoulder when Dean came close. His voice lowered and he leaned even closer. “Don’t worry, Dean. I was good. I used a net and they all just jumped into it.”

“Did anyone see?” Dean whispered.

“Just Jesse. You should have seen, Dean. His eyes were bigger than mine on my birthday!”

“You remember your birthday?” Dean eyed his brother sideways.

“Yeah, Dean. I remember all my birthdays. This year you gave me a book. A special book. And bought me a cake. It was strawberry with white icing. It was really good. Last year, you took me swimming before we had cake. I liked that, too.”

“You remember,” Dean whispered. “You really remember.”

“Dean, look!” Jesse tugged on his sleeve. “So fresh, they’re still floppin’ around.”

Dean lifted the lid on the first barrel; there was barely enough water to cover the huge catch.

“Sam’s awesome!” The boy squawked, his youth apparent in his voice. “He is an awesome fisherman!”

“Yeah, he’s awesome,” Dean parroted. “Bet he’s worn out now.”

“Nah, I don’t think so. He never gets tired.”

That was certainly true. The kid was more observant than Dean would like. “Still,” he said, “I’m gonna take Sam inside.”

Jesse’s smile dropped. “Is he okay? He’s not in trouble, is he? He was good, you know. He always worries about bein’ good.”

Dean’s frown eased. Jesse had an innate ability to accept Sam, with all his strengths and limitations. “He was good?” Dean prompted. He wanted a little more information.

“Yeah,” Jesse grinned effortlessly. “He remembered where he put his lunch, and he didn’t touch the babies. Why can’t he touch the babies?”

“He’s strong, Jesse,” Dean explained, placing a hand softly on the boy’s shoulder as he bent forward. Even if he never looked older, sometimes he felt it. “Really strong. And he doesn’t know how to be gentle when he gets excited. Or when he gets scared. I don’t want him to hurt anyone.”

Jesse shoved his shoulder into Dean’s flank hard enough to make Dean grunt and stumble sideways a couple of steps. The boy turned the bill of his cap so that it shaded his eyes. “You’re kiddin’, right? He’s a big puppy. So eager to please and thrilled when he does good.”

“How’d you get so smart?” Dean winked at him.

“Told ya I didn’t need school!” Jesse called out as he ran toward the town square, his hands waving in the air and his voice fading with the distance. “Caught all the fish we need for the week. I’m freeeee!”

“Sammy? You okay?” Dean nudged his brother. He reached out a hand to caress Sam’s low back, checking for stress as he did.

“I’m good, Dean. It was really good. Jesse, he’s amazing. He can cast a line into the water and pull out a fish without even looking. He knows just where to sink his line.”

“I’m sure he does, buddy. You tired? Ready to head back to the storage room?” Dean prodded him in the direction he was hoping his brother would take.

“Not tired,” Sam said, his voice lowered. “But I’m ready to lay down with you.”

“Yeah, Sam,” Dean whispered, leaning in closer. He liked it when Sam sounded like that, strong and confident. “I’m pretty sure you’re always ready for that.”

“Where is he?!” Owen’s demanding tone silenced them both. The man moved toward Beth, glanced over at Clark, and bellowed out again, “You said he’d be on the river. He wasn’t, and I’m runnin’ short of time. Where is he?”

Clark cut off his path to Beth. He was tall, easily a head taller than Owen, but thin as a reed. Clark’s manner was so calm and easy, and his words so well thought out, that Dean had taken an instant liking to him. There were few who commanded Dean’s respect in the after, he didn’t usually stick around anywhere long enough to develop such attachments, but there was something about Clark that suggested reliability and fairness. 

“Easy there, Owen,” Clark warned. He put a weathered hand in the middle of the smaller man’s chest and nudged him to a stop. “We got all we needed early. The boy went off to play with his friends. He needs some time of his own.”

“Not when I’m here, he don’t,” Owen growled.

Clark bent down, plucked out a tall blade of grass and put it between his lips. He rose back up to his full height, probably matching Sam’s, and shook his head lazily from side to side—all without moving his hand from Owen’s chest. Clark’s small, lop-sided smirk was the only change that Dean could see.

“You ain’t nobody to him, Owen. Don’t pretend you are.”

“I’m his father!” Owen exclaimed, pushing into Clark’s hand and going nowhere. Clark was a lot stronger than his thin frame suggested, or at least more determined.

“Nah,” Clark chuckled. “You haven’t been a father to him in six years. But you can be his friend, if ya like. Maybe an uncle if ya try hard enough.”

Owen stepped back. He looked toward the cart, then took a few more steps in that direction. “This ain’t right. Nobody catches that many fish in a day. How’dya do it?”

Clark shook his head dismissively. “Been a good spring for us. We’re gonna have plenty come winter. Too bad y’all aren’t doing so good up in Springerton.”

Dean’s eyes flew open. He turned to face his brother, masking Sam from sight as best he could, and walked them both slowly toward the store. “Move, Sammy,” he muttered.

“I’m gonna go now. I wanna see the kid before I head out. And you might just regret those words, old man.” Owen’s statement was the last Dean heard before he shoved his brother through the door and into “Beth’s Necessities and Pleasantries.” Sometime in the past week, he had convinced her to capitalize.

“Sammy, what happened?” Dean asked, his voice barely a whisper, once they had entered the storage room and he bolted the door behind them.

“It was great, Dean!” Sam exclaimed, all wide-eyed and dimpled. “I didn’t do anything but cast the net, and the fish just hopped right in.”

“You raised your hand, didn’t you?” Dean accused.

“Just for a second.” Sam leaned in conspiratorially. “Nobody saw it, not even Jesse. I was good, Dean. I promise.”

Dean huffed. “I know you were Sammy. You always do your best.” He spread his blanket over the feather mattress Beth had found for them. He put his on bottom because Sam’s blanket was better, and he didn’t want it torn by the quills. He sat down on it and patted the spot beside him.

Sam ambled over, his grin mischievous. He sank down on his knees next to his brother, and used his muscled arms to push Dean down onto the soft surface. Sam manipulated his brother with his superior strength until Dean was laying flat, his legs together, and Sam straddling low across his thighs. “This okay, Dean?” he asked, his tone that perfect pitch that Dean ached to hear.

Dean had intended on a talk, but apparently his brother had other ideas. “Yeah, Sam. It’s perfect.”

Sam grinned, tugging at his brother’s pants until Dean loosened the ties and lifted his hips to let Sam pull them down and off.

“Be careful, Sam,” Dean warned.

Sam scooted down farther, bending closer to Dean, slow and purposeful. All the while, watching his brother’s eyes for his reaction. He rubbed the tip of Dean’s hardening cock against his lips. “Mmm…I will be, I promise.” He chuckled before swallowing his brother down.

Dean groaned. Sam didn’t get his point, but this wasn’t the time for a lecture. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to feel. To feel secure, and perhaps, loved.

He arched up as Sam sucked. It never took long, unless Sam wanted it to. Sam had spent years mastering the task and he was an excellent student. Took pride in his work. He nudged a knee between Dean’s legs, and Dean spread them eagerly, hoping for more attention. His balls, his hole, any consideration would be welcome. Dean groaned in anticipation, and just then, Sam pulled off and moved up to place a soft kiss upon his lips. Dean groaned again, not so much in anticipation this time.

“Sshh,” Sam whispered. He placed two fingers against Dean’s lips, and Dean gladly accepted them. He didn’t open his eyes though, he knew Sam would be staring down at him, and Dean wasn’t sure what he would see. Sometimes he was afraid that if he looked, he would say something like, “Where does this part of you go when we aren’t alone?” And he never wanted to hurt Sam like that. Right now, he just wanted to feel the confidence of his lover. 

He moaned as he felt Sam’s finger circling his hole. “Yeah,” he encouraged.

“Sshh,” Sam repeated. And that finger gently, firmly glided in. Sam slid down and captured Dean’s cock with his mouth again. It was all Dean could do not to buck up and gag his brother. Sam could handle it, but Dean would come, and he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not until his brother was deep inside him.

Another finger slid in, much more smoothly than it should with just saliva to ease its way, but Dean wasn’t complaining. He pushed up into it, getting a little more of Sam’s mouth on his dick as a bonus. “God, Sam!” he hissed, trying to keep his voice as low as he could. “Come on! Fuck me now, before I—Fuck! Before I blow my load in your mouth!”

Sam moved swiftly and silently. He pulled off with a soft _pop_ and hooked Dean’s legs with his elbows, levering them back toward Dean’s shoulders, each huge hand planted on the feather mattress next to Dean’s shoulders, and without the need for additional guidance, entered Dean in one swift movement.

“Mmph,” Dean grunted. His hips tried to retreat from the force, but he held steady, knowing what was to come. He could feel his muscles quivering, trying to relax. Even his legs trembled in his brother’s grasp.

Sam held steady for a moment, sheathed to the hilt, waiting. He circled in place, seemingly enjoying the feel, and Dean humped against him as the slow rhythm turned teasing. “Come on,” he grunted. “Come on!”

“Sshh,” Sam whispered against his ear, kissing and licking it. He rose up on his arms, holding himself and Dean’s legs easily, all that strength visible in his biceps and shoulders, and Dean reveled in it as Sam started up a vigorous pace. Dean answered as best he could, meeting Sam’s thrusts with all his energy, grunting with each movement, bracing himself on his elbows to hold his place. It was glorious. Sweaty, sticky, exhausting…and glorious. 

“I’m gonna come!” Dean panted.

Sam lowered his head again, never faltering in his rhythm, never leaving Dean with any of the weight to bear, and whispered, “Then come, Dean.”

“Ahhhh!” Dean cried out. He arched up and Sam buried himself deep. Dean felt the warmth inside him even as he spent himself between them. And he lay back exhausted.

Dean was silent, except for his gasps as his breathing returned to normal. He let Sam clean him and turn him on his side, and fell asleep in the strong arms of his little brother. His lover.


	4. Chapter Four

**The Good Place**

**Chapter Four**

[Master Post on lj](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/24113.html)

“Come on, Dean,” Sam whined. He put his hands on his knees and scrunched down enough to be at eye level with his brother. He could best employ his practiced, soulful expression from that angle. “The catch was good again, and I mended two big nets today.” He held up two fingers, pushing them forward in the air a couple of times for emphasis. “Just for a little while? You let me before, lots of times. Can I?”

Dean grunted and Beth chuckled. They had been sitting in their usual after-work positions in the shop when Sam came flying through the door a couple of minutes earlier. He hadn’t even slowed down long enough to glance at the soda on the shelf. 

Jesse had followed on his heels, and simply stood next to his new friend, hands tucked behind his back. He didn’t look up, just waited patiently for the outcome. 

Dean’s eyes flashed toward the boy for a moment; he saw the smirk Jesse tried to suppress. Even if Sam didn’t know what Dean’s answer would be, Jesse did—it was always the same.

“The town square?” Dean questioned, making sure he got it right. He looked toward Jesse for a response.

“Yessir,” Jesse replied. “Everybody’s gonna be there. Been such a good catch all week, folks are lettin’ their kids go play early!” He was so excited, he started bouncing on the balls of his feet. Sam wasn’t quite bouncing, but he was tense, just holding his enthusiasm back. 

“Sure, Sammy,” Dean huffed. “You can go, but you remember the rules, right?”

“Yeah, Dean. I remember.”

“If he doesn’t, I do!” Jesse hollered, shoving Sam out the door and squealing as he ran down the steps.

“Sam, stay with Jesse!” Dean hollered after them. It should have seemed odd to tell his brother not to wander away from a boy whose head barely topped Sam’s waist, but it wasn’t. Dean shook his head; at some point in the last forty years, he had become accustomed to this new Sam. The one who listened and followed his orders implicitly in everything, except in the night. 

After a few minutes of sipping Clark’s homebrew and relaxing into a congenial silence, Beth grinned sheepishly. “I’ve got something for you,” she said, “been working on it awhile. It’s back at the house. Come on.” Already off her stool, she nudged his shoulder with the palm of her hand and repeated, “Come on.” 

They were nearing the end of their fifth week in Oakville. Things were going nicely, except for the weekly visits from Owen. Dean was happy with his work, and more than happy with the cash Beth was paying them. Every time he tried to tell her it was too much, or attempted to return a portion, she shooed his hand away with a comment like “rubbish,” or “you’ve earned it, both of you”.

He already had enough money tucked away deep in his pockets and in his duffel to refresh their supplies and move on. Perhaps it was time to pack up and head farther north for the summer, but it just seemed so…nice here. Like they belonged.

He had sat down for a meal at the Worley’s dinner table for the first time two weeks ago, Sam at his side, and Jesse grinning like a lunatic from across the table. Clark sat at one end, Beth at the other. Clark had offered a prayer that evening, but since then, he and Beth took turns. Sometimes Jesse chimed in with a few words of his own. Dean sat silently as they spoke their solemn vows and entreaties, but never offered one of his own. He didn’t even bother to bow his head. It didn’t seem right—he’d tried it a long time ago, and it hadn’t worked then, so it seemed like a lost cause now. Sam’s head was always lowered though; Dean figured Sam was trying his best to mimic what the others were doing, like he always did.

Since that first shared meal, he and Sam hadn’t eaten cold, jarred food in the storage room again.

Dean liked Clark. He was straightforward, fair. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was well thought out and deliberate.

A few days after that first dinner, Beth was in the kitchen finishing the dishes, and Sam had run off after Jesse. Sam always asked before he went, and waited anxiously for his brother’s permission. So far, Dean had never said no. Dean wasn’t certain when he’d let his guard down, but he just wasn’t as worried about Sam when Jesse was around. And there were at least a couple of hours of daylight left after dinner this time of year.

Clark had pulled out a pipe that evening. An honest-to-god, made out of wood, pipe. It was brown, stained dark and carved simplistically in a leafy pattern. It still shone like it was new. Dean hadn’t seen such a nice one since _before_.

Clark took a tiny, brown pouch out of his shirt pocket and pulled a pinch of…well, something, out of it, packing it into the bowl with his thumb. He scratched one of the long, thin matches he kept in a tin on the table beside his chair along the sole of his boot, and when the flame caught, he lowered the stick to his pipe, puffing as the contents began to sizzle and glow.

“Ahh,” he sighed, letting a cloud of smoke escape with the sound.

He held it out to Dean. “Want some?”

Dean had never been a smoker, but hell, he’d been on this renewed Earth for a long time now, and nothing seemed to do him much harm, even when he wanted it to. What could it hurt?

“What is it?” He asked.

“Jus’ tobacco,” Clark replied. He took one more quick puff and leaned back against his chair before letting it out. “Don’t get to do this often, but with Owen around more, doin’ his best to bring somethin’ worth tradin’ for, the price went way down.”

Clark wiped the bit off with his sleeve and held it out. “Seems to me like you could use some.”

Dean took it. He looked at the pipe for a moment, tilting it a little from side to side—careful to keep the bowl upright—before putting it between his lips and inhaling hesitantly. He’d experienced Clark’s liquor already; no reason to assume his smoke would be any milder.

He leaned back immediately, letting the smoke work its way down, and closing his eyes as the tingle overcame him.

“Damn!” Dean mumbled, holding the pipe out in the direction he knew Clark was sitting. “I’ll take ten more of those!”

Clark waved him off dismissively. “Go ahead, finish the bowl.” He patted his shirt pocket. “I got a little more.”

“It’s still early,” Clark said a few minutes later. “Beth’s headed out to her weavin’ group, and Jesse can keep an eye on Sam for a while. How ‘bout goin’ over to the bar with me?”

Dean raised his head sharply, the movement made the room spin. “What?”

Clark chuckled, slow and deep. “Jesse’ll watch Sam for a bit, bring him home by dark. He’s a good kid, despite his genes. Beth will be back by then.” He paused for a minute, taking another puff before he continued, “seems like you could use a break.”

“Yeah,” Dean grinned. That sounded good.

* * *

The bar didn’t look much different than Beth’s shop from the outside; the sign was still in lower case letters, though. Dean shook his head and chuckled at the thought. He had to grab a hold of the doorjamb to fend off the dizzy daze that followed. No more pipe for him, he decided. 

The inside was completely different. It wasn’t what he would have pictured from the old west or anything, but it was still, well…rustic. There was a bar, but it was far from smooth and shiny—more like a few rough wooden planks laid across a couple of sawhorses for support. He thought leaning against it in a drunken stupor would probably leave him plucking out splinters for a week. He wouldn’t even dare pat a hand down on it to demand a drink. That motion alone might inflict damage. He wondered if the shack doubled as something else during the day, and the long planks were brought in just for the evening crowd.

There weren’t any bottles on shelves behind the bar. Hell, there weren’t even any shelves! No mirror, either. But there was a bartender, and every patron seemed to have a full glass of cloudy brew in front of him, so that was good enough for Dean. He took a seat next to where Clark had folded his lanky frame, and looked hopefully toward the busy barkeep at the other end of the _bar_.

There was a pretty blonde staggering toward them, partly drunk and partly wanton, and Dean wasn’t certain which part was greater. He recognized her instantly despite the hiccups and missteps—and the sloshed hooch—she was the same young woman who came into Beth’s shop every other day around the time Dean was finishing his shift. Dean sighed—Linda, Leda, Leah—after forty years the names all started running together. Damn! He hadn’t even gotten his first drink yet.

“Hey, Dean.” She leaned in and purred close to his ear, placing a hand on his shoulder and scoring it gently with her short nails. More of her drink spilled out of the glass as she navigated it warily to a spot next to him on the bar, and he marveled at how any managed to remain within. “It’s nice to see ya here. Been lookin’ forward to it.”

The “nice” sounded more like _nahse,_ and Dean pulled his shoulder away from her touch as smoothly as he could. He still enjoyed the curves of a woman, the way she moved, and how she used those attributes to entice a man, but he enjoyed them from more of a distance now.

Dean used to flirt. He’d done it for so long, it was a difficult habit to break. Long after the old Earth ceased to exist and this new one began, and his only focus, his sole concern, became Sam, he still flirted. But what little Sam did learn, he learned from Dean, and the first time Dean sat across a tavern table from his little brother, with his boot heels caught on the ledge of a tall stool and Sammy mimicking his every wink, every nod, and every grin, Dean stopped cold turkey. He couldn’t watch this new Sam trying so hard to copy those kinds of gestures. 

He wondered on occasion if there was anything he was missing, but after all this time, he figured he had everything he needed. Just the view alone would have to be enough.

The blonde didn’t take his movement as the brush-off he intended it to be, and leaned in for a sloppy kiss. It was all Dean could do to avoid her lips without appearing squeamish. In the next second, the woman was a barstool’s distance away, and Clark was standing between them.

“Ain’t even dark yet, and you’re drunk.” Clark nodded toward the blonde. “And you’re thinkin’ too hard,” he said to Dean. It brought Dean around, and sent _LindaLedaLeah_ staggering out the door. People respected Clark, and Dean respected him for it.

They had a few drinks that night. More than a few, actually. Dean didn’t start to relax really, until Beth stopped by after her weaving group and let them know Jesse and Sam were home, tucked safely away in Jesse’s room, having a “sleepover.”

She stayed for a round and headed back to the house “in case the boys needed a snack later.”

Dean laughed. He’d never had such an experience. Not ever.

“I remember, you know,” Clark said. He’d led Dean to a corner table after Beth left, and they’d enjoyed an easy conversation so far. “I’m older than Beth by eight years. I remember more from the before.”

Dean took another gulp. A big one. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothin’.” Clark studied him over the edge of his glass for a minute before he continued. “Jus’ wanted to tell you. I know who you are. And I know who your brother is.”

Dean gasped. He dropped his drink; luckily, it was nearly empty. Clark reached over and righted it.

“Dean.” Clark didn’t have to raise his voice to get Dean’s attention. “I’m not makin’ any accusations here.” His lip curled up into that familiar lop-sided grin, and he tilted his glass into Dean’s until both had an even amount of cloudy brew. “I lived in Bonner Springs when I was a kid.”

“Not too far from Kansas City,” Dean said, keeping his voice as level as he could.

“Not too far from Lawrence, either, “ Clark added.

“Yeah.” 

“There are a lot of stories about you boys, but I saw it for myself.”

“You saw it.” Dean stared across the table. He didn’t move, except for the tremor in the hand holding his drink.

“Yep. I saw it all start.”

“How?” Dean managed to lift his shaking hand to his lips and take a sip. He was hesitant to put it down; the edge of his lip gave him purchase and stilled his hand. It didn’t start in that cemetery ten miles outside of Lawrence, it started with his petition in Detroit, but the confrontation—the Battle of Armageddon—yeah, that began in a tiny cemetery in a miniscule town named Stull. Just a handful of miles outside the town that at one time had been Dean’s home.

“Dunno,” Clark said, shrugging his shoulders. He leaned back, stretching his lanky legs out in front of him, and crossing them at the ankle. “It was scary then, I was just a teen, ya’ know. But after all this time, it’s jus’ kind of a part a’ me—like an old movie playin’ in flickerin’ slides that flash through my mind in bits and pieces. I don’t tell nobody. They’d think I was crazy, ya’ know?”

Dean nodded. “What did you see?” He leaned forward, clutched his drink. He was anxious to hear someone else’s recount of the events.

Clark shook his head, “It ain’t that clear after all these years, and after all that’s happened in the after. I’m not sure it was all that clear in the firs’ place. I jus’ know I saw it. I know it was you boys. And I saw bright fire and black wings. You both wailed, almost in harmony. Couldn’t tell if you were cryin’ or praisin’. But I know whatever you do now is meant to be. And I’m okay with that.”

They staggered back to the house that night, and as soon as they did, Sam hurried down from Jesse’s room to meet Dean and return to the storage room with him. They never spent a night apart.

Dean’s ragged blanket was on bottom as usual when they lay down. “I missed you, Dean,” Sam whispered against his ear. He pulled his brother close and tugged tentatively at the laces of Dean’s breeches. “Is this okay?”

“God, Sam!” Dean hissed, thrusting upward to make contact. “Always!”

With that simple permission, Sam became a different man, and Dean closed his eyes, and concentrated on appreciating the difference. 

That late afternoon two weeks ago was the first time Dean went out with Clark, but it wasn’t the last. He’d accompanied Clark a handful of times since. Sam never complained. If anything, Sam greeted Dean even more enthusiastically when he returned.

Things were going so smoothly that Dean didn’t do much more than grin now, these few weeks later, as Jesse pushed Sam out the door, and the two of them hooted as they ran toward the town square.

“Dean? You coming?” Beth asked.

Dean shook his head; he’d almost forgotten that he’d risen for a reason. 

It really was a lovely afternoon for late June in this part of the country. The breeze was brisk enough to keep the insects away, but not strong enough to rile up the dust. And the humidity was, well, low enough to keep the moisture limited to his armpits at least. Beth pulled a floppy hat onto her head for the short journey to the house. 

“I’ll be back in a-a minute,” She said when they entered. “Go get a soda or something in the kitchen, okay?”

Dean was starting to worry. He’d never heard her sound this anxious. “Sure,” he said, offering a brief smile. He opened a cupboard, and noisily rifled through it, hoping the sound of everyday activity might make Beth more comfortable.

“Close your eyes!” She called out before entering the kitchen.

“Beth?” Dean questioned. He’d grabbed a jar of those Perfect Pickles off a shelf, but set it down quickly before turning around.

“It’s nothing bad, I promise,” she assured. “Just…jus’ close your eyes.”

She sounded a little unsure, nothing sinister or alarming, just…hesitant. So unlike her.

“Okay,” Dean agreed. He even reached his hands up to cover his eyes. “You should know I’m feeling pretty uncomfortable right now. It’s been a long time since a woman made me feel like this.” He laughed at his joke, to _make_ it a joke, but it really wasn’t much of one.

That seemed to help, and Beth chuckled along with him. Dean felt heavy cloth brush across his left shoulder.

“You can open them now.”

His vision was drawn to the sensation immediately when he opened. He wasn’t afraid, not even his usual state of wariness—he’d let that lapse somewhere in the last couple of weeks. He only turned that way because of the sudden sensation. As soon as he did, the fabric unfolded and tumbled down his chest, only coming to a stop when the last few inches crumpled into a haphazard pile at his feet. Beth still held the rest above him.

A new blanket! It was mostly blue, but the pattern interweaved was a mix of green and beige pixelated diamonds. There were several folded widths, he could tell by the weight on his shoulder, so he wasn’t quite sure how wide it was, but it was definitely as big as his own blanket, or as big as it had been. 

“Been working on it since the first time I saw yours,” she said, a shy smile replacing her usual sure expression. “I thought about giving you some red, like Sam’s. But it just doesn’t suit you, ya’ know? Do you like it?”

Dean reached a hand up to touch. It was soft, thick. It would be warm. Warm enough for the north when they moved on. He didn’t know what to say. No one had done anything like this for him, not in a long time.

“Beth—”

“Deeeaannn!”

Beth dropped the blanket and they both ran for the kitchen door. Jesse’s pained screech drawing their immediate attention.

“Deeaann!” Jesse was already there when they opened it, his cry just a little softer. He was bent over and gasping for breath, clutching his chest. “C-c’mon!”

“What’s going on?” Dean demanded.

“Let’s go,” Beth grabbed the boy’s hand and kissed his forehead reassuringly. She looked over her shoulder at Dean before nodding back toward the breathless boy. “Show us where we need to go, baby.”

Jesse tugged her along. It was all Dean could do to simply follow and not pass them on his wild search for his little brother.

* * *

“He was jus’ pushin’ us on the swing, I swear… We was all takin’ turns… Sam never gets tired, and he likes to push us. He…he wasn’t doin’ no harm.” Jesse gushed words between panted breaths as he ran. He looked over his shoulder at Dean, his brows drawn up high, pleading for the adults to believe his words. 

“Never mind all that now,” Beth said.

“We close?” Dean asked.

“Town Square,” Jesse huffed, doing his best to nod his head at the same time.

Dean ran passed them once he had a location. They would catch up.

Oakville was a large settlement, and Beth’s store was just a few shops in from the eastern border fence, so the distance to the center of town was over a quarter-mile. He heard high-pitched, screeching voices before he turned the corner around the Founders’ statue and caught his first glimpse of the children’s playground in the town square. A handful of kids were running away, but most stood their ground, some crying, others crying out.

Sam was at the center of the melee, backed up against one of the tall diagonal poles that supported the swing, a shorter man standing just inches before him. Even with his shoulders slumped forward and his head lowered Sam towered over his adversary.

Dean slowed as he got closer, trying to get an idea of what was going on. It was always best to get a fix on the situation before he acted, as long as it didn’t take too long. There was something in Sam’s arms that kept them occupied and folded close to his chest. Dean squinted tight until his eyes were barely slits and he could just make out the tiny ball of fur nestled against Sam’s body from where he stood. It was lying along one of Sam’s forearms, its arms and legs splayed out on either side, and its head resting easily in one palm and tail barely making it mid-way to Sam’s elbow, as Sam nervously scratched behind one white, furry ear with a single finger of his other hand.

The other man swiped an arm out, knocking the kitten from Sam’s grasp. It was Owen, of course. By now Dean could recognize him from any angle. He always seemed to have a nasty look or comment for Sam when he was in Oakville, although they had all been cursory up to this point. Usually just comments like, “Outta my way, ya big oaf.” Or, “Can’t believe they let a dummy like you cast the nets. It’sa wonder you haven’t lost ‘em all by now.” Apparently, Dean had underestimated the man.

“Ain’t right!” Owen shouted, and Sam drew back against the wooden pole. The kitten hissed as it hit the ground, raising a forepaw and taking a swipe at Owen’s pant leg like it might actually plan on sticking around to protect its friend—until Owen stamped his foot at it, and the poor thing skittered away.

“That’s Suzy’s new kitty,” Jesse whispered. 

Dean jumped. He hadn’t heard the boy approach.

“Sam’s been lookin’ forward to seein’ it all week. Suzy’s been promisin’ to bring it for a while. This was the first time, though.”

Owen slammed a fist into Sam’s gut. “It ain’t right. A grown man playin’ with all these kids. Playin’ with _my_ kid!”

As Sam slumped further forward with the blow, his hands reaching around to cover his injured belly, Owen threw another punch, landing it perfectly against Sam’s lowered jaw. Dean could hear Sam’s “humpff!” and the kids’ collective “Noooo!” from where he stood.

Sam curled in on himself, turning to the side defensively. “Dean,” he cried out into the air. “Don’t let him hurt me, Dean.”

“Shut up! It ain’t right,” Owen repeated as he wound up for another strike. “I been watchin’ you. Nobody can fish like you can. And now you spend all this time with our kids. What, you gonna steal ‘em? Steal my boy?” He emphasized his last words with three solid kidney punches.

Dean sucked in a breath, watching his brother take the blows without retaliating. Sam had called out for his help, but hadn’t seen him yet. Dean took a step forward, trying to get his brother’s attention.

“It ain’t right,” Owen panted. He was short of breath even as he landed another body shot. “A grown man—”

“Stop him, Dean!” Jesse begged. “Please stop Owen. Don’t let ‘im hurt Sammy!”

Dean might have grinned at the nickname if not for the situation, and his brother doubling over and groaning after taking another gut punch.

“It’s okay, Sammy!” Dean called out. He used that voice he knew Sam would hear and obey. “You can hit him back. He started it. Don’t raise your hands though.”

All the kids moved aside immediately, creating an open channel between Dean and his brother, like Sam could hear him better that way. And Sam looked straight at Dean with frightened, tear-filled eyes, ignoring the barrage of punches landing across his midsection.

Most of the kids, as well as the gathering adults, probably expected Sam to punch under-handed following Dean’s command. None of that mattered though, as Sam tilted his head just that tiny bit to let Dean know he understood the importance of his order. Sam swiped at some of the moisture on his cheeks and under his nose. He wiped the gooey mess on his shirt before he did anything else.

Sam groaned, and the children scattered. Moving out of the way to give Sam space, rather than out of terror. Their expressions weren’t strained or fearful, more like awestruck and amazed. And in that moment, Dean was proud. Sam ignored whatever pain he felt, despite the fear still lingering in his eyes, and stood tall. He started with a deep breath and a simple push. After that, Sam met Owen’s fist with an open hand, and shoved Owen back. Then he stopped.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Sam muttered. “I’ve been good.”

When Owen approached again, both his fists were raised and he taunted as he danced from foot to foot. “So, you want to play with the big boys now, huh? Come on, I got another present for ya’. Jus’ come a little closer and I’ll show ya’.” He held up fingers and gestured for Sam to approach.

Dean smirked. Wrong words. Those were definitely the wrong words. No reason to wake a sleeping giant.

“Do it, Sammy!” Dean commanded, maintaining that gruff tone. It was hard. He wanted to smile and encourage his brother, but that wouldn’t work right now. Sam needed the direction.

Sam followed both orders. He moved closer as Owen had taunted, and he fought back, as Dean had demanded. The second Sam approached, Owen lashed out with another body punch. This time, Sam didn’t hesitate. He engulfed the other man’s hand in his own huge fist, and lifted it, lightening-fast, high over his head. The sudden, jerking movement wrenched Owen’s shoulder out of its socket and forced an anguished cry from the man. 

“Aagh! You monster!” Owen screeched, his feet dangling inches from the ground even as he scrabbled, searching for purchase. “Put me down!”

Sam moved him slowly from side to side, still holding Owen’s clenched fist high in the air, and letting him swing around in an unnatural pattern from his dislocated shoulder. “Not, not a monster,” Sam mumbled. “I didn’t want to fight. I was being good.”

“Please,” Owen begged, “put me down.” His other hand was clutching at his wounded shoulder.

“Tha’s enough now,” a new voice broke in, just as low and commanding as Dean’s had been. Clark walked up to Sam. There wasn’t an inkling of fear in his eyes or his step. Yes, standing next to each other, they really were of an equal height. No where near an equal build, though. “Put ‘im down, Sam.”

“Now, Sam!” Dean shouted. A crowd had gathered, and with the increase in attention, Sam’s fear intensified like it always did, becoming more difficult to control. “It’s okay now, Sammy.”

“Put him down, son.” Clark said, his tone unchanged. “I think you’re done here, ain’t ya’?”

Dean watched as Sam’s eyes met Clark’s and then Sam’s fist unclenched, and Owen fell in a heap at his feet. “I didn’t do anything,” Sam mumbled as he dropped to his knees and covered his face with his huge hands. “I was being good.”

“You were good,” Clark said before Dean could even get near. “You were real good, son.”

Dean was at his brother’s side by then, and Clark turned his attention to Owen. And even as Dean was overwhelmed with his own task, he could hear Clark’s words.

“Shush, now, Owen. Gonna take ya’ to Doc Ricker. Why’d you go an’ do that? He ain’t nothin’ but an overgrown kid. Doesn’t hurt nobody.”

“Nah.” Dean heard Owen reply. “He’s somethin’ else. Don’t know what, but he’s somethin’ else.”

“Don’t move now, Owen,” Clark said. “Your shoulder’s barely holdin’ together as it is. Let’s get you to the doc. You hurt it on one of the pulleys on the pier, right? Tried to figure out how we’re catchin’ all these fish. You remember, right? If you come up with another story, I’m pretty sure you won’t find anymore fish or game here this season…”

Dean couldn’t hear anymore as Clark and a handful of other men carried Owen in the direction of whatever counted as a doctor in the after. Dean wasn’t sure who that might be, it hadn’t mattered what settlement they landed in, neither he nor Sam had ever required a physician’s care.

It was time to move on, Dean decided. Probably was weeks ago, when Owen started visiting so often and noticing Sam. Dean couldn’t stew over missed cues and hindsight now, though. He needed to form a plan and focus on what last minute supplies he needed to purchase from Beth before they headed out. There was no reason to carry unnecessary weight, but it wouldn’t do any good to hold onto Oakville currency if they were heading far into the northwest, either. He was lost in his planning when Sam wrapped his long arms around his waist in a hug.

“Tell me, Dean,” Sam’s voice wavered in panic. Dean couldn’t see his eyes, but knew they matched the pitch. “Tell me again. About the good place. You know.”

Dean settled them both in one big huddle onto a pinewood bench he was certain hadn’t been there last week. He rubbed a hand across his brother’s shoulders and patted his back long enough for some of the tension to ease. Then he brushed a tuft of hair away from Sam’s forehead and tucked it carefully behind his left ear, caressing the helix as he did. He smiled when Sam chuckled at the familiar tickling sensation.

“Tell me,” Sam repeated.

“Sure, Sammy. I’ll tell you.”

“Sam.” His brother corrected.

Dean pulled away. That hadn’t happened. Not in forty years.

Sam grabbed onto him and dragged him in close again. “Tell me,” he begged.

“Okay…Sam. There’s…” Dean swallowed hard. “There’s a p-place—”

“Paradise!” Sam interrupted. He wiped the moisture away from under Dean’s left eye with his thumb before Dean realized it was there.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, swiping away the tears from beneath his right. “Paradise. Where we can settle down forever.”

“And it’ll be a good place, right Dean?” Sam rocked against his brother.

“A perfect place. Mostly just us. But everyone we see will be friends, and you’ll remember them all.” Dean rubbed his brother’s arm. Hummed between sentences soothingly.

“Paradise,” Sam said.

“Paradise,” a higher-pitched voice repeated reverently. 

Dean looked over to see who it was, certain he already knew, but needing to verify it.

“Can I go, too?” Jesse asked, plunking himself down on the other side of Sam, and draping his own slender arm across Sam’s huge frame to offer his own brand of reassurance. He looked past Sam and stared at Dean hopefully. “I’ll be good. I can work hard—you’ve seen me. And I don’t eat too much. I want to go to paradise.”

Dean suppressed a groan. That reaction would not go over well, with either boy. He reached over and tugged at Jesse’s ball cap.

“Have you ever been to a baseball game, Jesse?” he asked.

Jesse ducked his head, shook it from side to side like he was embarrassed.

“I’d like to show you how to play before we leave,” Dean said.

“Really?” Jesse’s face lit up. “Nobody plays ball now. A few folk talk about it, but I mean, that’s all they do!”

“I’m not great, Jess, haven’t played in a really long time. I mean, a really long time. And we’re gonna have to figure out some kind of makeshift bat and ball and gloves, but we can give it a shot.” Dean pushed the brim of the boy’s hat lower over his eyes until Jesse giggled and pulled it higher himself. “But I figure every kid should have a chance to learn to play baseball.”

“And Paradise?” Jesse asked. “Do I get a chance at that, too?”

“Oh, you definitely get Paradise, Jesse.” Dean grinned. He barely caught his breath before he had a chest-full of ten-year-old. He wrapped his free arm around the boy, keeping one securely around his brother as well, and mumbled under his breath, “Probably long before we find ours.”

Dean hoped he still had an afternoon left in Oakville to keep his promise to Jesse, to pitch a rag ball so the boy could swing a stick at it. Hopefully make contact a few times. If they had enough time, he would tear up one of those horrible sacks in Beth’s shop to make bases. Sam would get a kick out of trying to catch the ball and tag Jesse “out.”

As injured as Owen appeared to be, and as far away as Springerton was, Dean expected he and Sam had one more day here in the Oakville Settlement if they wanted it. Two more dinners at the Worley’s table. Two nights to share with Sammy—no, it was Sam now—in the storage room. No more alcohol though, he decided, he couldn’t afford to be caught off-guard again, not after what happened today. 

Dean looked up at the darkening sky. It wasn’t as if night was upon them, just clouds suddenly rolling in, a mix of light ones and dark. The breeze was picking up—more wind than Dean had felt since April. He heard a rumble overhead. Maybe there was some rain coming. Despite the relentless humidity, there hadn’t been much rain. He kept one arm around Sam, the other was cradling the boy who had wrapped himself around his chest. “Let’s get Sam home, Jesse,” Dean whispered close to the boy’s ear. 

_Home_. What an odd sound that was.


	5. Chapter Five

**The Good Place**

**Chapter Five**

[Master Post on lj](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/24113.html)

That evening after dinner, Dean heard Clark come into the house. Dean was in the kitchen getting a drink. Sam was upstairs with Jesse—Dean didn’t want his brother around when Clark returned. “A few shreds of muscle and sinew. That’s all Doc Ricker said was left of Owen’s shoulder. Bone yanked clean out a’ the socket. Jus’ danglin’.” He heard Clark tell Beth. Dean didn’t feel sorry for Owen, the man deserved what he got. But with that diagnosis, Sam was surely condemned in this settlement, even with Clark’s mitigating tactics on the playground earlier that day. Dean shrugged to himself, leaned back against the counter. They always left. Sometimes sooner than later, and they’d been in Oakville a long time. It had been good. 

As soon as the commotion outside died down, he needed to go pack.

Dean watched out a window as the trader he recognized from his first day in Oakville, and a few other occasions, agreed to cart Owen back to Springerton, along with a free crate of Clark’s homebrew. Everyone seemed to appreciate it. The horses were soon in a full trot, and the man was glancing up at the gathering clouds overhead just as Dean had earlier.

As soon as the cart past the settlement border, the clouds trembled and darkened. The winds grew. Dean stepped outside and stared overhead. He hadn’t been out for several hours, trying to avoid a confrontation, and what he saw now made him gasp. 

“What?” Beth asked.

Dean pointed up, and a little to the south, his fingers traced the familiar, swirling counter-clockwise cloud pattern overhead. They were in what was once Mississippi, and not too far from the Gulf if his judgment was correct. And it was that time of year—what was once called peak hurricane season. He hadn’t seen anything like it in over forty years. This year was filled with firsts for him.

“Everyone needs to get inside.” He told her. “Not right now, but soon. Make sure they have water and…and food. And anyone who lives on low ground needs to go somewhere else, somewhere higher.” He was rambling; he knew it. But it had been a long time since he was in charge of anyone other than himself and Sam. 

That night, after all the planning had been completed, Dean stared out the storage room window at the clouds in the distance. There was enough moonlight slipping through to see them clearly, and the swirling pattern was unmistakable. Mother Nature was reclaiming her realm.

Sam walked up to his side, pressing his strong, naked body against Dean’s clothed one, and running his fingers through Dean’s hair. Sam leaned down to nuzzle his neck. “Maybe not,” Sam whispered.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Maybe someone’s just giving us a little extra time.”

“Sure,” Dean scoffed. But he closed his eyes and turned into his brother’s embrace.

* * *

It rained, poured, for three full days. Dean woke the first morning after the rains ceased, and started it like he did every other morning, scoring another notch on his forearm and reinforcing the others. 

“You don’t gotta do that anymore, Dean,” Sam said. “We can find paper. Lot’s a folk have paper now.”

Dean huffed. It amazed him how quickly Sam began taking on regional dialects in their travels. Sam’s was already stronger than Beth’s. But he supposed Beth remembered her roots from the before better than Sam did. “Got my reasons,” Dean grumbled, patting Sam’s shoulder in consolation as he rose. 

The rains had been heavy, but most of the devastating winds and flooding skirted around them. Dean had arranged twelve groups of three to survey the area later that morning. He divided the grid by degrees and sent each group out at thirty-degree angles. Dean figured they could get a reasonable damage assessment that way.

Sam laughed at him. Told him he looked at everything like it was a pie. Dean just thought that Sam remembered pie. He nearly choked.

Groups came back and reported. Heavy damage to the south and east. Trees felled, the few hunting shacks outside the settlement decimated. There was less destruction to the west. The riverbank was overrun to the northeast, so the teams tasked with heading across the two bridges that would allow them to assess any damage in that direction returned early, and with no more information than two out of the five docks were completely destroyed. Gone. And the remaining three were wavering in the water. 

A week. It had been a week now since the “Owen Incident,” as Dean had labeled it. He was itchy. Pacing back and forth in Beth and Clark’s small home even if he was the one who had confined them to it. People were looking to him for advice, and he hated it.

“Come on, Dean,” Sam begged. “Can we go out?”

Dean stopped. He looked at his brother, then looked around. Jesse was staring at him. Beth, too. Even Clark glared.

“Yeah,” he nodded. The hard-packed dirt streets were beginning to dry and the risk of stagnant puddles potentially teeming with mosquito larvae seemed to be diminishing daily. “I guess it’s as good a time as ever to start the clean up.”

Clark left to tell the others that they could get their lives back to normal, or at least start clearing away the debris. Jesse whooped. But as Sam neared the door, Dean held him back. “We gotta go now, Sam. You know we gotta go.”

It hurt, seeing the dimpled smile fall from Sam’s face.

“One more time,” Sam begged. “Let me fish with Jesse one more time.”

“Please, Dean,” Jesse chimed in. Dean startled. He thought he’d kept his comment low enough that only Sam would hear, but even if he had, Sam’s response wasn’t.

“We’ve been talkin’ about it all week,” Sam said. “Jesse wants to show me how he casts a line so far and so deep. I’m good with a net, but I’ve never done it like Jesse does. I wanna learn.”

“It won’t take long, I promise,” Jesse offered. “Sam’s a fast learner. It won’t take nearly as long as it took me to hit that rag ball you made for the first time!” The boy grinned so wide, it reminded Dean of Sam at a similar age. What a long time ago that was. In an entirely different world. The two of them were going to kill him.

The three days of rain had been followed by one day of outdoor recon. And then folks were back inside to wait out the worst of the insect plague that followed. That gave Dean time to fashion an indoor baseball diamond in the storage room. Then they played for two afternoons on their tiny field. The “ball” was a part of the same sack Dean used to cut out bases. He used some of the fabric and the twine that cinched it at the top to wrap his creation as tightly as he could. He didn’t want it to be too heavy, they only had a twenty by fifteen foot field after all. And that was only after Sam spent the day moving the entire contents of Beth’s storeroom into the store itself, stacking the aisles absurdly high. Fortunately, the storm kept most of the shoppers away for a couple of days.

Their bat was a foot-long dowel. It was the best Dean could find, but it matched their miniature field, so all seemed in order when he sat down to explain the rules of the game. Jesse couldn’t wait for the details. He wanted to swing. He wanted to hit. And he wanted to run. Who could blame him?

Sam hadn’t cared what position he played. He was happy to stand in the “outfield” and wait for a ball, or to cheer on his friend. Mostly, he just cheered his friend on. It took _a lot_ of tries before Jesse even made contact. But the first time bat met ball—the look in the boy’s eyes was something Dean was certain he would never forget.

“What’dya say, Dean?” Jesse asked again.

“Can I?” Sam asked. “Last time, I promise. I won’t ask again.”

Dean looked back toward the open storage room door. Everything that should be back in it was, and everything that should be in their duffels, with the exception of what they had used overnight and this morning, was safely packed away. They were ready for the road.

He sighed. “Okay, Sammmm…uh. Okay, Sam. You can go.” His word stumble was lost on both boys, as they celebrated with a high five—low five for Sam. “I’ll be there in a couple hours. No arguments when I get there!”

“Okay, Dean,” Sam agreed. And once again, he and Jesse were rushing out of the shop.

Beth held up a glass, and an open jar of homebrew. “One more to pass the time?” She offered.

“Nah.” Dean shook his head. “As good as it sounds, I don’t think I oughta.”

“So where are you heading now?” She asked.

After a few rounds of questions, Dean was grateful for Beth’s attempts at mundane conversation. It helped pass the time. He laughed when he found himself checking his wrist to see how close he was to his two-hour deadline. He hadn’t done that in a long time.

Beth caught his gesture, and even though she was probably a little girl the last time she saw a watch that worked, she laughed right along with him. They were just settling down when they heard a commotion coming from the street outside. It was barely midday, no way was the tavern open and serving yet.

Dean stepped to the window, drew back the heavy curtain that blocked the wind. They had just removed the wooden planks that kept most of the water out during the storm. Owen, dammit! It was Owen out there, and he wasn’t alone. With his arm still in a sling, cradled close to his chest, he wasn’t much of a threat, but with a dozen other Springerton men at his side, he was. 

“Where is he? That giant monster?” Owen screeched. The sound hurt Dean’s ears. The other Springerton men stood on either side of him and trailed along behind. They were craning their heads to scan in all directions. “Send ‘im out here! All we want is ‘im. We got no beef with no one else! He don’ belong here, an’ you know it!” 

Owen and his pack were walking along the street slowly, tapping thick sticks along the walkway, the shop walls, the center flowerbeds—anything that would make a sound—and repeating the same vitriol. Owen was nearing Beth’s shop now, and Dean bristled, ready to rush out the door.

“No!” Beth grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t do it!”

“ _What?!_ ” He practically spit at her. It was the most vicious thing he had said to her, and it was a simple, innocuous word on its own.

“Stop, Dean,” she said. Her voice so even, Dean wondered again who she was. She shoved him into the storage room, all the way back until his calves hit a pile of those vile sacks and he fell on top of them. “You might not be able to die, but you can’t help your brother if those men out there trap you on the street and hold you down!”

Dean heard the _clang_ of the bell on the front door, and went silent. Beth walked back out, and he listened to her begin a conversation. It was too soft, too easy to be Owen. He opened the door a fraction of an inch, and squinted so he could see beyond the tiny crack.

“Leila,” Beth said.

_Leila!_ That was her name! All those options that had run through his mind, and he still hadn’t gotten it right. The blonde had been in the shop several times since their encounter in the bar, but she seemed to pay more attention to her shopping than she did to Dean after that. 

Leila wasn’t very far from Dean, only the door and a handful of steps separated them.

“Leila,” Beth repeated, and the young woman turned away from her shopping. “I need your help.”

Suddenly, Leila dropped the package in her hand and focused on Beth completely. “What is it, Beth?” No matter how wanton she might appear on occasion, her community still came first. Dean smiled.

“Those men out there, they mean harm. I know it!” Beth said.

Leila rushed to the other woman. “What can _I_ do?”

“Take these,” Beth shoved a bag of hastily packed items toward her. “It will look like you’re done shopping. When you leave, make your way to the river as quickly as possible. I’ll stall the men as long as I can. Warn Clark about what’s coming. I’m sure he’s at the docks by now. He’s always there.”

“Al-alright,” Leila said. Her hands were shaking as she took the bag. 

“No!” Beth scolded. “You need to look normal. Like everything is okay. Smile at them, Leila. Please, just…smile.”

Leila offered a tiny one. Then a big hug. “I can do it, Beth. Don’t worry about me. I can do it.”

The last thing Dean heard from the storage room was Beth pushing open the big wooden door and calling out to Owen. Dean had already finished stuffing the last few items into their duffels, and after shoving the Colt in his waistband; he snuck out the back door. 

It wasn’t an easy route to the river, through the trees and brush and mud, but it was the shortest. Hopefully, he would be there, retrieve his brother, and leave, all before Owen and his gang discovered Sam’s whereabouts. 

Dean cleared the last tree half an hour or so later, gasping for breath from his exertion, and shaking the unidentifiable goop that weighed him down and slowed his progress off his boots _again_. With all the muck and detritus, the boots that had survived an apocalypse and forty years of travel were certainly done for now. He’d found a dry place in the “v” of an ash to store the duffels before the last tree line, and headed toward the riverfront with a much lighter load. 

He was about to call out to his brother, call him away from the docks and head in any direction that took them away from Oakville, when a group of people crowding along the bank caught his attention. They were loud, shrieking and crying. He thought he heard a couple, “Oh, Gods!” And a, “Do something!” Maybe even a “Save, ‘im, please!” One old woman, pole still clutched in her left hand, took a step back from the group and fell to her knees. Dean was still too far away to tell for sure, but he thought she crossed herself.

Dean bolted forward, the pain in his lungs no longer relevant. He pushed through the outer fringe of the crowd, elbowed his way further in. How could Owen and his gang have beaten him here? He thought. Surely Beth could have stalled them a little longer than this. Dean thrashed through the crowd, using the last of his strength to get to the front. He had to get to his brother.

“Sam!” Dean called out. He came to a sudden stop when the last of the mob parted to let him through, and he saw that the space around his brother was wide and open. There was no one within ten feet of Sam, and he was standing tall. Perhaps if Dean had bothered to look up when he’d cleared the tree line, he might have seen Sam above the others. He hadn’t though, he’d been too worried about what might be happening to his brother. 

Dean looked now. Sam’s face was contorted in agony. His mouth was open, but no sound came out. The muscles in his neck rippled with strain and spasms as his jaw jutted forward. Drops of blood trickled from his nose and oozed from the inner corners of his eyes. He was blinking rapidly, trying to clear them without the use of his hands. His lips were moving, like he was talking, but even as Dean got closer, he couldn’t hear any sound.

The riverbank remained overrun after the storm, muddy water sloshed out, and Sam stood on the very precipice. His boots were off, pant legs rolled up. Sam’s feet were buried beneath the murk. The waters around his ankles moved swiftly, and the wind was strong enough to push Dean backward, but Sam didn’t waver on that edge. His hands, both of them, were raised high in the air before him, and his eyes were focused, despite his constant blinking, mid-river.

“You can do it, son!” Someone called out from the other side of his brother. The wind carried the words, made them stronger. 

Dean didn’t alter his attention; he was still focused on Sammy—Sam. But he knew that voice.

“You can do it, son,” Clark repeated, but this time it sounded more like a plea. “Please. Help him, Sam.”

Dean followed Sam’s gaze into the river. God! He collapsed, his knees skidding through the mud and scraping on the pebbled bank even through his jeans. It was Jesse out there, bobbing and gasping in the torrent. His hands were churning the water, slapping at it, pushing it down, in a futile, juvenile attempt to win the war, and his chin jutted up, struggling to stay above the surface. The river was high, raging, and the current should have been moving him rapidly downriver, as far from the bank as the boy was, but he bobbled there like strings suspended him at that very point. 

Jesse lifted his spindly arms high in the air and it reminded Dean even more of a marionette. Dean’s eyes were focused on the ghastly scene. Jesse’s head dropped below the surface for a few seconds before his chin rose again and a mouthful of water spewed from between his lips. Dean froze where he was, his fingers slipping through the mud and sand to find a hold. There was nothing he could do to help the boy now, and if Sam could, Dean wasn’t about to interfere. If they could give anything to this new Earth, it would be Jesse.

_Do it, Sam, you can do it!_

Sam tilted his head in Dean’s direction for a second, like he knew Dean was there and could hear the silent encouragement, but Sam’s hands didn’t fall, and his focus didn’t waver, so Dean figured it was all right.

_It’s okay, Sam! You’re doing great!_

Suddenly, there was an impact in the air, a silent implosion—a void—that sucked the wind right out of the atmosphere before releasing its full force. The air, time even, stood still for that second, two maybe, and then it just…pushed out. Gushed forward. Dean tumbled backward a few feet, more than what a simple gust of wind could manage, and when he was able to look up again, Jesse was half out of the water. And Sam had fallen to his knees in the exact same spot his feet had been. The crowd gasped. There was no other sound. Dean was so proud of his brother. Sam was doing so well!

_I’m so proud of you, Sam!_

He wasn’t sure if he thought the words, or just felt the sentiment, but they made him smile, and he saw some of the torment leave Sam’s face. Dean would take more if he could. He tried to crawl closer, his fingers delving deeply into the muddy bank with each movement. He was still too far away.

Jesse was out of the river now. His small body, limp and lifeless, floated above the water toward the shore, with only the sounds of the wind and current to accompany it. The flow was furious, and its frothy white fingers reached up to recapture its prey. Jesse’s body rose a few inches higher. No one dared make a sound, afraid their words might cut the invisible strings that suspended him. Slow motion didn’t explain it, freeze-frame might be a better term. Dean held his breath and thought he might pass out from it. The boy’s head drooped back, along with his arms and legs. His back arched languidly, and his drenched clothing sagged close to the river, like they were trying to pull him back into it. His shaggy brown hair dripped water into the river, paying its toll as he passed overhead. The Yankees cap was gone. Dean couldn’t take another breath, not until the boy fell upon the shore next to Sam. 

Dean was still too far away—twenty feet seemed like a mile when he was struggling against the wind and the power of Sam. The crowd started gathering around Sam and Jesse. Dean couldn’t see…

“Nooo!” He heard Sam’s anguished cry, and a clap of thunder accompanied it. The clouds had been thick since the storm, and they grew dark again, rumbling in complaint.

Dean was finally close enough to see. Jesse was lying on the ground, sprawled out loose-limbed and unnatural. His head lolled to the side where it had landed. Unconscious. His shirt was ripped open and the translucent skin stretched across his ribcage was laced with intricate blue lines. Lines that seemed to blacken and thicken as Dean stared. Jesse’s lips were dark blue, almost purple. No child should be blue. Dean cried out. His anguish harmonized with the rest of the crowd. 

Sam raised his hands into the air, and the clouds reached down to sting his fingertips. At least that’s what it looked like to Dean. Sam flinched when the fog enveloped them, but he didn’t pull away. Whatever it was, he let it happen, and held his hands up in the air until the clouds chose to retreat. Then he placed both against Jesse’s pale, motionless chest and held them firmly in place. They glowed, and the red-gold light traveled from Sam to the boy.

Clark came to Sam’s side, the strong wind was in his favor, and he was able to crawl toward the scene more efficiently than Dean. Dean was still struggling to get near. Emotion was strong, and the mob was rife with it, closing in to see what was happening.

Another loud disturbance came from the other side of the crowd. It parted again, and Owen moved through swiftly, cutting one-handed through the gathering like a butcher knife through butter. His men followed behind. They were easy to spot, the camouflage clothing they had adopted stood out like neon against the Oakville crowd.

“My boy!” Owen called out. 

“That’s him!” A man at Owen’s side yelled. He was pointing to Sam. “I knew it when you described him. That’s the demon that tried to kill me in Springerton. I didn’t do nothin’ wrong! He just flung me against a wall, and stuck me there! WITH HIS MIND!! Woulda killed me too, if the other drifter hadn’t stopped him. I’m tellin’ ya. That’s him!”

Dean recognized the man at once. He was bald on top, a shiny pate with a fringe of mousy brown and gray hair all around it. He was pale white and nearing fifty. Likely born before. He was one of those who probably shouldn’t have survived, but that wasn’t Dean’s call to make. It didn’t matter right now anyway, they were perilously close to Sam, and Sam was preoccupied, both his glowing hands were touching Jesse, gliding over his chest, his shoulders, his belly.

“Get your giant paws off my boy!” Owen yelled.

“You pervert, get away!” The pasty man added. And that was too much…

“You!” Dean yelled against the wind. “ _You_ are the pervert! A rapist! That woman, that poor woman. We know what you did in Springerton. Why your own don’t condemn you, I don’t know!”

Sam’s hands still glowed red, and the town folk were afraid to approach. Dean wasn’t, his fingers were digging deeper, and he was creeping closer each time Owen turned his attention away.

It all happened too fast. And Dean was still half a dozen feet from his brother. 

Jesse’s chest caved in, his belly ballooned out, an absurd parody of the seesaw on the playground, and a second later, the motion repeated. Water gushed out of the boy, and air rushed back in with a loud whistle-groan, and then his head righted itself on his shoulders like it suddenly remembered its position. Dean thought in that split-second that water was supposed to come out of the boy’s lungs in bucketfuls, and everything should be perfect after that, but it didn’t work out quite that way.

Sam sat back on his haunches, his hands out at either side, and watched as Jesse’s belly flattened, and his chest rose—his breaths evening out some. Jesse’s eyes were still closed, but Clark was already smoothing the boy’s hair away from his brow, and whispering reassuring “shh’s”.

At the very instant that Sam’s head dipped in relief, Owen and the pasty man were upon him, one on each side.

“You!” The pasty man hissed, his face twisting into a sneer.

“Don’t touch my boy!” Owen exclaimed.

Sam’s eyes opened wide, his head fell back. And in what looked like nothing more than a rudimentary attempt to protect himself, Sam lifted a palm to each man’s chest. He didn’t push or punch, he just held his hands up to keep some distance between himself and his attackers.

It didn’t matter what Dean saw or what he knew. It only mattered the outcome. The glow in Sam’s hands had diminished, but it hadn’t disappeared, and as he placed a palm against each of his assailants, his hands flared red-hot again.

Owen felt it first, it looked like. He clutched at his chest, his shoulders curling in around it, but before he could utter the “Oh!” that his lips had formed, his body flew several yards up the bank. It landed with a thud, and even though the slope wasn’t steep, the body slowly rolled—flopped—in the direction of its original position.

Dean couldn’t keep watching until it stopped. His attention was mainly on Sam as his brother’s second attacker howled an eerie death keen—an almost supernatural sound. The Springerton man who had taken a woman out beyond the town border, raped her until she bled, and laughed when Sam stumbled upon them as he hunted for an evening meal, was finally getting the reward he’d earned. Dean was only sorry to see his head dip below the surface of the raging river for the last time. That meant his suffering was over.

The wind stopped, and Dean scrambled back to two legs. “Sam!” He called out. He looked over to see Jesse’s eyes open, staring up at Sam in bewilderment. His chest was still heaving, but moving in the normal response to respiration.

Just then, Dean’s arms were yanked behind him. He struggled against the hold, lashing out with elbows and shoulders, even his head, but the two men holding him weren’t easing up. He looked over and saw Clark in a similar position. Three more camouflage-clad men were closing in on Sam. They moved hesitantly, bent their knees and stepped forward warily, like they were nearing an incendiary device.

Sam was still looking down at Jesse, occasionally shifting his eyes in the directions Owen and the pasty man had flown. Sam had no idea what was coming. Or perhaps his assailants were the ones who didn’t.

“Run, Sam!” Dean yelled. He still struggled against the restraining hold, but he knew he wasn’t going anywhere before the three Springerton men got to Sam. It didn’t matter what Sam could do, this wasn’t the time for it, and it wouldn’t help Sam. “Run! Go! Go while you can!” 

He felt something slam hard against the side of his head, and before his eyes drooped closed he saw Sam stand up and follow his command.


	6. Chapter Six

**The Good Place**  


**Chapter Six**

[Master Post on lj](http://spn-j2fan.livejournal.com/24113.html)

“Wake up, Dean. It’s bad out there,” Beth said.

Those were the first words his fuzzy brain comprehended. He turned hesitantly, trying to assess the damage in his aching head, but found it didn’t hurt any less when he moved it. Not any more either, though. He guessed that was a good sign.

Beth stood up. She paced back and forth across the tiny living room of the Worley’s home, intently biting on the fingernail of her left thumb.

Couch. That was where Dean realized he was. His new blanket was spread out over him, and Sam…Sam! Sam wasn’t here, and Dean remembered everything. He jumped up.

“Dean, wait!”

“For what?” He growled. He already had the blanket folded haphazardly, and headed for the storage room where their duffels—damn! They weren’t in the storage room any more; Dean had left them perched in the lower limbs of a young ash just before he’d made his move out from behind the cover of the woods and toward the riverbank.

“They’re here, Dean,” Beth said. She shoved one of the dark green packs toward him with a foot. “A couple of Clark’s buddies found them and brought them here.” She gaged Dean’s puzzled expression and then continued. “They like Sam. They know he’s special and wanted to do something. But with the Springerton men running around here, threatening anybody who’s helping Sam, this was all they could do.” She toed the other bag in his direction. They were both too heavy for her appearance of easy exertion. 

“I gotta go,” he croaked. His voice was wrecked, and he wondered if all his silent encouragement on the riverbank hadn’t actually been aloud. “I—Sam needs me.”

“Wait.” Beth was at his side again. “It’s bad out there,” she repeated. Dean remembered those words waking him. “Clark is checking it out now. At least give him a chance to tell you what they got planned. I don’t want to think he took all that risk for nothing.”

Dean took a step back. He nodded, and accepted a glass of tepid water he hadn’t even seen in Beth’s hand a minute earlier. “Jesse?”

Beth smiled, and Dean collapsed back onto the couch. He hadn’t realized the stress he was carrying until then. If Jesse was okay, that only left one person for him to worry about, and that was Sam. Sam, out there alone somewhere, on the run, and without Dean to keep him focused and out of trouble. He didn’t like where that thought led. He reached back to feel for the Colt.

Beth put a hand on his shoulder, and turned her attention to the table beside Clark’s chair. The Colt sat there all alone.

“Jesse’s okay. He coughed some at first, then he was sleepy for a bit. He was back to his normal self awhile after that. He’s up in his room now, but he doesn’t want to be. He wants to be down here helping.” She nodded toward the table, and then to the duffels on the ground. “All of your things are safe.”

“A bit?” Dean repeated her words as a question. “Awhile? How long have I been out?”

“Couple hours,” Beth said. “Three, maybe.”

“Three hours! I gotta go! Sam needs me.” Dean was off the couch, and reaching for the Colt before he finished the phrase.

“Give Clark five minutes,” Beth pleaded. She grabbed his sleeve and held on. “Don’t go like this. People around here listen to Clark. Let him help you.”

Dean sunk into Clark’s chair, checking the Colt’s firing mechanism as he did. Beth was right, people in Oakville listened to Clark. But would the men from Springerton do the same? “Five minutes,” he conceded. “I can’t wait any longer.”

Beth nodded, and busied herself repacking Dean’s new blanket into the larger of the two duffels. It made Dean grin a little, in spite of the tension. Apparently Sam would have to carry his blanket once Dean found him. Served him right for making Dean tote both bags all the way to the riverfront—and now to the pond.

 

Clark wasn’t back in five minutes, ten either. It was all Dean could do to sit still, but Beth was right. Even if Clark were unable to tame the mob, his insight would help. And Dean had an advantage: He was the only one who knew where Sam would go. He could wait a little longer, a few more minutes at least.

The door creaked open slowly; Dean rose to his feet. Clark peeked around it, and entered hesitantly. That seemed odd to Dean. This was the man’s home, and it had been an overwhelming day. Why not throw the door open and announce his presence? And then Dean remembered. This was Clark. The tall, thin older man who had made Sam as comfortable on the dock as he had made Dean at ease in the tavern. This was Clark, who had taken in his wife’s sister’s orphan after raising his own children to adulthood in the aftermath of Armageddon. This was Clark, who mediated Settlement issues with the tilt of his head or, when it was really bad, a handful of words. This was Clark, who wanted only what was best, and didn’t let anything as inconsequential as his own pride stand in his way toward that goal. 

Dean sank down into the chair again, raised his eyes up toward Clark hopefully, and dropped them at the simple, bleak shake of a head.

“I’m sorry,” Clark started. He didn’t wait for a reply before continuing. “People are riled. They don’t know what they saw at the river, but they’re listenin’ to the Springerton men. As far as folk are concerned, those men jus’ lost two of their own.”

“They lost a rapist and an attempted murderer!” Dean hissed. He was on his feet in a moment, and his head, no matter how fast he healed, was reeling. “Owen would have killed Sam. He probably would have tried to on the kids’ playground last week if he had all those men to back him at the time.”

“ ‘M not disagreein’ with ya, Dean,” Clark said. He sat down on the couch, leaving his own chair to Dean. “I’m jus’ tellin’ ya what’s goin’ on out there. They gotta think I’m with them or I won’t hear anythin’.”

Dean was already sinking into the comfort of the chair when Clark’s words hit him. “What? Are you saying you’re joining them?”

Clark ducked his head. He was always modest, but never so unsure. “No, I ain’t _joinin’_ ‘em. I’m jus’ sayin’ I can’t do anythin’ to help your brother if I don’t go _with_ ‘em.”

Dean slammed a hand down on the table beside him, and the tin of matches fell to the ground with a series of fading clanks, slender sticks scattering across the floor. “No! You can’t do that! You owe Sam!”

“Dean,” Clark’s tone changed, and he was his usual confident self again. “I do owe Sam. That boy upstairs means a lot more to me than I thought he would when he landed slump-shouldered and shakin’ at our doorstep six years ago, and cried for the next two days straight. And a handful of hours ago, I thought I’d lost him forever. But the town folk are afraid, Dean. The Springerton men are feedin’ ‘em all kindsa crap, and I can’t do anything to fix that if I don’t act like I’m joinin’ ‘em.” Clark nodded toward the door like the posse waiting to track Sam down and string him up by the neck was right on the other side.

“He didn’t do it on purpose!” Dean exclaimed. He sat forward. Back. Forward again. He couldn’t get comfortable anywhere in this house now. He was itching to leave, to find his brother, but felt a need to make peace with Clark. Clark was trying to help, and Dean could use all he could get right now. “You saw him. Sam was only—”

“I know,” Clark interrupted in his usual stoic tone. “I got my boy back. The last one I’ll ever call my own. Believe me, I know. But those men out there aren’t listenin’, and they’re rilin’ up the town folk, tellin’ ‘em tales about a giant who can throw a man across a room without touchin’ ‘im.”

“He deserved it!” Dean growled. “If you’d seen the woman he left behind, you would agree.” He crumpled into the seat again. He covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t see her, but Sam did. It was too much for him. Sam doesn’t remember people being like that, like they were _before_.”

Clark shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dean. I’m doin’ all I can here. Where are you headin’?”

Dean raised his head sharply. He grabbed hold of the armrest, the sudden movement made him queasy. He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you ask? I don’t know where he went.”

“Of course not,” Clark agreed. “I just want to know where _not_ to look. The longer I can hold ‘em off, the better.”

Dean stared. Clark was the same man tonight that he had been the whole time they’d stayed in Oakville—a little wordier than usual, but that was likely Dean’s fault. “Don’t go north.”

“Got it. Sam ran south, toward the Gulf. You were gonna meet up at the delta.” Clark summed it up in his usual tolerant fashion, but the deep breath he sucked in after the words didn’t fall into his typical pattern. Clark took off his floppy hat and leaned closer to Dean. He lowered his head and swiped the back of his hand so hard across his eyes that Dean figured his vision probably blurred for a few seconds. When he finally met Dean’s gaze, the look was something Dean had never seen from him before. The creases in his forehead were deep, and his eyes watered. When Clark spoke, it was low and sorrowful. “You know if we catch up with ‘im, I won’t be able to help, right? It don’t mean I don’t wanna, jus’ means I can’t. Dean, you gotta get there first.”

“I’ve got everything ready,” Beth said.

Dean swallowed his gasp. He’d forgotten she was there.

“Here,” she continued. She pointed to the duffels. “I packed what gear you had left, some extra food, and a soda for Sam. Give it to him when you find him, okay?” Her eyes were red-rimmed and glistening, but still wide and hopeful. 

There was a chance. If she thought so, Dean could, too.

“Yeah,” Dean picked up Sam’s bag, slung it over his right shoulder. It was heavy.

“I took some of your cash,” Beth admitted. “Figured you’d want to pay for your stuff, and it won’t do you much good where you’re going.”

“You’re right,” Dean agreed, pulling his own duffel up onto his left shoulder. The load was heavy, but he could do it, it was only a half-day or so walk back to the pond, less if he jogged along the flattest sections. He reached for the Colt, tucked it deep in his waistband, and wondered exactly where Beth thought they were going. He wasn’t sure he had ever discussed the details with her.

He headed toward the back door, only to feel Beth’s hand on his arm. “Wait,” she said. “Let Clark go out the front, first. Let him draw the men away from here.”

Dean glanced up at the older man, who wasn’t exactly smiling, but still angled his lips in that familiar crooked style. “Won’t take me long,” Clark said as he opened the door a crack and slipped out through a sliver of space so slim, not even he should have fit through. No goodbye. No good luck. He was a man of few words most of the time.

Beth peeked out the curtains of her front window. She didn’t move or make a sound for several minutes before getting up and gesturing for Dean to follow her to the kitchen. She shoved a sandwich in his hand even as she opened the back door.

“There are half a dozen more of those in your bag. You take care, now,” Beth whispered close to his ear. Her lips wafted across his temple like she wanted to offer a mother’s reassuring kiss but wasn’t certain if it would be accepted. “Watch out for yourself, too. Not just Sam.” She checked his duffels to make sure they were secure, and patted his shoulder to give him the okay.

He started out at a half jog down the steps. It was only another twenty feet to wooded cover, but he turned back anyway. “Why are you doing all this? Why are you risking so much?”

“You saved us all, both of you. And you saved us again today, even though you didn’t have to. I suspect you didn’t have to the first time, either. This is the least we could do.” Tears filled Beth’s eyes, and she blew him a kiss as he turned and disappeared into the woods. It was the one she tried to offer earlier but was afraid to.

Dean wasn’t convinced about the saving part, now or _before_. Well, except that Sam had saved Jesse today. That had been good.

* * *

It took Dean longer to get back to the pond marked by the twin willows than he expected. The duffels weighed him down, the night sky was void of light, and the mud between the asphalt floes was thinner than before, catching and trapping his boots as often as it allowed him to slip past.

He jogged when he had the strength, walked when he didn’t, and crawled—one duffel snuggled close to his chest, the other hitched high on his back—when the darkness and the sludge made two-legged travel too cumbersome.

Twice, no, three times, he considered ditching one of the packs. Each time, he weighed his options in his dehydrated, concussed, sleep-deprived mind, and opted against it. He would have to stop, decide which items were necessities and which were not. He would have to strike a match, spotlighting his position at least long enough to carry out the task, and take the time to transfer gear from one pack to the other. And then he would be leaving a marker behind: A beacon leading the mob to his trail.

No. It was easier to walk when he needed to. Crawl when he must.

Dawn was close. Dean could see faint pink on the horizon. He smiled until he heard the first buzz close to his ear, and then slapped a muddy hand against an itch on his forehead. He couldn’t see his fingertips in the shadows of the woods, but felt the burst of a plump mosquito beneath them. Mosquitos seemed to grow larger in the after.

“Damn!” he swore.

The treetops rustled, a short, ecstatic burst. _Dean!_ They exclaimed.

Dean heard it, he was certain. It was softer than the slap against his forehead. More painful, though.

“Sam!” Dean called out. It had to be him! Dean rose to his feet, dropping both duffels and rushing forward. 

_Dean!_ It was a bird this time. A gentle but high-pitched whistle. A sparrow maybe, perhaps a finch. Something small. The soft, sweet syllable turned him to his left and had him sprinting despite the muck. He lost a boot a dozen steps later.

“Sam!” Dean yelled. “Come on. Where are you?”

Dean stopped. The sun was rising slowly, but he had followed the clues nature offered and deviated from the path. And now the fresh water scent of a few months earlier was overwhelmed by the odor of the stale, days-old torrential downpour. And nothing looked familiar.

He dropped to his knees. His supplies were gone. He’d lost one boot already and would certainly lose the other soon, and he had no idea where he was. This never happened.

“Come on,” he mumbled hopelessly, “let me find him.”

The sun rose swiftly, swept from the pit of the horizon and high into the morning sky. A golden ray glided across Dean’s face, blinding him momentarily before continuing its trek across the forest floor. Dean blinked, his eyes followed the lighted path toward the towering twin willows he remembered from their journey to Oakville. 

They were identical, standing stoically, side-by-side, and offering a tentative admission with their wavering fingertips. Dean scrambled to his feet, rushing to accept their proposal.

“Sam,” he gasped as he parted them and made his way past. 

His brother was on the far side of the pond, beside that majestic white willow. Sam’s hands were high in the air, and the fish jumped up eagerly, reaching for his fingertips before doubling back upon themselves and tumbling into the water again.

“Sam,” Dean repeated, softer this time. “You did good. You always do your best. Jesse’s okay. Clark and Beth, too. C’mon, we gotta go now.” He reached a hand out across the pond, like it would stretch far enough to connect them. “I dropped our duffels just a little way back.”

Sam didn’t reach out to take the offered hand. Instead, he stared down at the water and continued his symphony, leading the fish in their jubilant dance.

Dean moved to join his brother. It wasn’t a huge pond. It wouldn’t take long.

“I’m tired of runnin’, Dean.”

Dean could scarcely hear Sam over the sound of the fish splashing out of the water and plummeting back below the surface on each circuit. He scrambled, limping with one shod, mud-caked foot and one bare, to get to his brother’s side, hoping to be close enough to hear whatever came next.

“I like it here, Dean,” Sam said. His voice was flat, dreamlike. He still stared at the fish connected to his fingers by those indiscernible strings. “We have a warm place to sleep. It’s dry in the storage room, and we have lots of space all to ourselves. And I have a…friend.”

Sam looked over his shoulder, finally, and as he paused and his dancing fish fell back beneath the surface, emotion strained his face, the detachment now a shadow in the past. His forehead creased, and his eyes narrowed with impending loss. “I don’t wanna go.”

Dean was at his brother’s back now, staring out at the water to avoid the bitter confrontation that would likely accompany his words. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to yank his brother out of an environment Sam had become accustomed to, felt welcomed in. He thought about reaching a hand out to touch Sam, offer comfort, then decided against it.

“No choice, Sam,” Dean replied in that gruff tone Sammy always obeyed. “We gotta go, and we gotta go now!”

Sam turned slowly back to the pond, the fish were tentatively lifting their heads out, mouths offering silent “O’s” and seeking oxygen in the enemy environment that tempted them. “Nah,” he said, his voice soft. “I don’t gotta go.”

Dean took the half-step needed to blanket his brother’s back, and wrapped his arms around Sam’s waist. “Yeah, Sammy. We gotta. I’ve gotta get you out of here. Those Springerton men are trampling through the settlement, searching for you, or anybody that might be helping you. And their words are stirring up a lot of the Oakville folk who saw what you did. People get scared easy now, you know that.” Dean hugged his brother close, watched over Sam’s shoulder as the fish hesitated at the surface, waiting to see what they should do. “Even though you saved Jesse, what happened to Owen and that other man…well, they don’t know what to make of it, and we gotta go before the Springerton men decide for them.”

Dean let his arms drop after a last gentle caress, and took a step away to let Sam absorb what details he could, and come to the necessary conclusion—that he must follow his brother’s orders just as he had for the last forty years—and to momentarily mourn the loss of his ephemeral peace. Sam never had peace for long in the after. But this one had been a good one, so the loss would be particularly poignant.

Instead of dropping his head like usual, a gesture Dean was convinced Sam mastered over the years to conceal his dispirited eyes behind the length of his bangs, and turning from the pond to follow Dean away from Oakville and the impending threat, Sam sank to his knees in the pebbles and sludge, leaning over the pond and sinking his hands into the water.

Dean’s attention was drawn to the pond where his brother’s huge mitts didn’t slap at the surface, but instead slipped tidily beneath, accepted into the water’s close-fitting glove. There wasn’t a sound, not even the slightest ripple. And now that his attention was there, Dean saw how clear the pond remained in the aftermath of the storm. All the way here, trees were down, leaves and limbs blanketed the ground. The river had been a floating barge of debris on that day…God! Just yesterday! But this pond was as clear as it had been over a month ago. He could see the fish gyrating below the surface, nipping at Sam’s hands.

He glanced across the pond to the twin willows, then scanned sideways in each direction. There were no felled limbs here, no trees stripped naked of their early summer plumage. The riverbank was muddy, the same as it had been on their way to Oakville.

This little oasis was untouched.

Then Dean saw Sam’s feet jutting out behind him, toes deep in the mud. They were bare and stained. Browns and greens driven deep into the creases—from the ground cover and the muck. There were no blisters, no open wounds or droplets of bright red, but the lingering lines of russet across the soles lowered Dean to his knees behind his little brother.

“Sam,” Dean whispered. He reached a hand down to touch one of his brother’s abused feet. The pond was at least a half-day trek from the settlement, a little farther from the docks. Dean closed his eyes and pictured Sam’s ankles just above the water at the riverbank. He’d been barefoot, setting his boots aside to keep them safe—and to keep from angering Dean, probably. Dean swallowed hard. It had been a difficult trek for him after the storm, and he’d had his boots. “Your feet.”

“My feet are okay,” Sam droned. “I’m okay. I’ll always be okay.” He nodded toward the water that Dean only now realized sparkled crystal-clear despite the heavy cloud cover. Even that single beam of sunlight that sent him in the direction of the twin willows was long gone. Sam leaned back on his haunches and raised just one hand this time, his eyes intent on his mission, and the fish jumped up eagerly, bumped into each other, and thrashed back and forth midair to get Sam’s attention. “They like me. How come they like me and people don’t?”

“People do,” Dean insisted. But when Sam scowled in his direction and one fish flopped onto the bank at his knee, Dean rushed to remedy his answer. “A lot of people like you. Nothing’s easy, little brother.” He reached an arm out across Sam’s wide shoulders in a tentative hug, and then he scrambled back to his feet.

He took a lopsided step and then pulled off his remaining boot. Dean looked down at Sam, still kneeling in the mud and staring up, and leaned down again to place a soft kiss on Sam’s lips. “Hold on. I’ll just be a minute.”

Jogging was easier with a level gait, and in daytime, despite the gray clouds. The twin willows spotlighted his path once he rounded the pond, and he wondered how he hadn’t found it in the first place. It felt so familiar now. A short distance farther, along a narrow footpath Dean hadn’t noticed before, but now saw as outlined by hyaline green brush, he found their duffels. 

He followed the mysterious, translucent plants back to the pond and around to the far side, and settled the heavier pack on the ground. It didn’t take long to find what he was searching for.

“Here,” Dean said, shoving the bottle into Sam’s outstretched hand. The fish dropped back into the water, and wriggled to the surface again, awaiting Sam’s next command.

“Soda,” Sam whispered. His eyes were big as he wrapped his hand around the bottle. “Where’d you get it?”

“Beth gave it to me before I left. She made me wait while Clark went out the front to distract the mob for as long as he could,” Dean replied, before grabbing Sam’s other hand in his own. “Don’t open it too fast or you’ll lose it all. I’ve been running with it. But Beth wanted you to have it.” He smiled at his brother. “See? People like you. Beth and Clark do… And Jesse.”

“It’s easy with the fish,” Sam said. He watched carefully as Dean eased the top off the bottle. “I want it to be easy.”

“Nothing’s easy, little brother.” Dean reached an arm around Sam’s shoulders in a gentle hug. “We just do the best we can.”

“No,” Sam shook his head, took a drink. “It can be easy. I’m stayin’ here. I’m not leavin’.”

Dean huffed out a breath, fell back from where he’d squatted on the bank and felt the moisture sink in through his jeans. “Sam, Owen’s dead. And the other man is—”

“I know that, Dean,” Sam interrupted. “I have a choice though, and I’m makin’ it. It’s either here or the good place. I like it here, but I figure I’ll be just as happy in paradise.”

“No, Sam, you can’t.” Dean rose to his knees to face Sam, the mud and moisture forgotten. “I need you.”

“You don’t need me.”

“I do.” Dean pulled the Colt from his waistband. He held it in both of his hands, turned it from side to side. “Every morning when I scratch a new day, I wonder if it will be the last day that you need me. The last day that I have a reason to still be here. But it never is. Sammy…Sam. Those men are coming, Clark can only slow them down for a little while, and when they find you, they will hurt you. And I won’t be able to stop them.” He swiped away some of the moisture from his face. “They might not be able to kill you, Sam, but they can hurt you. Over and over. It will be like hell, except that people you care about will be there to watch. Jesse will see. And me, Sam. I’ll see, and I won’t—.” He stopped, gulped in another breath. “I’ll be there, and I won’t be able to help.”

Dean jerked his head toward a rustling noise across the pond; it couldn’t be them, not yet. They would have made more noise approaching, surely. It was likely just a small animal scurrying passed.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Sam said, and Dean turned his head back toward Sam’s voice. Sam was staring at the Colt lowered onto Dean’s lap. “It’s either Oakville or the good place for me, Dean. I’ve made my choice, now it’s your turn to make yours.”

“God, no!” Dean lurched forward. Still on his knees, one hand sank into the pebbles and mud, the other clutched the Colt close to his chest. “No, Sam. I can’t…I don’t want…I can’t do it without you.”

“You can,” Sam smiled. His dimples showed. “Everyone likes you.”

Dean slumped lower. His head fell forward and he was silent for a few moments, long enough to hear Sam renew his symphony above the pond. He crawled back to his knees and watched for a few minutes. Sam could do so much. There was magic there. And Sam was good. It had to be good magic. 

Dean pulled up a sleeve and stared at his forearm, he hadn’t scratched a new mark yet as this new day had dawned, and already the old marks were beginning to fade. He and Sam were alive and unchanged, at least physically, for all these years. There was magic in both of them. Maybe not magic. Perhaps a gift, or maybe a favor.

He tucked the Colt back where it belonged, felt its comforting weight at the small of his back, and folded his hands awkwardly together for the first time in longer than he could remember. No, he actually remembered that day on the lakeshore. It wasn’t like this small, clear pond. It was a huge, seething lake surrounded by barren sand. And it had been painted with the ebony loss of his brother’s mind. Forty years, that was how long ago he had prayed. He’d given thanks that day, useless thanks.

He decided to try again.

“God. Jesus. Hell, I don’t care who’s in charge up there. Whoever it is, if you’re listening, or well, maybe just willing to listen.” He wiped his forehead with a forearm, his hands still clasped. “I need some help. I can’t do this alone anymore.”

Dean stopped and looked up, not sure what he was hoping for, but nothing happened. He dropped his head again. “Don’t make me do this.” He watched his brother for another minute. “Please, God! Don’t make me be the one!”

Again he paused and waited. And again nothing happened. Dean looked at his Sam who seemed completely unaffected by his words.

“Look, I’m at a loss here. I really don’t know—” He stopped when the rustling sound across the pond grew and the long tendrils of the willows parted around the figure of a man. The clouds dispersed precipitously, and the sunlight behind the figure made it impossible to see who it was. All Dean could tell was that it was only one man standing there. He moved his right hand around to his back slowly, lifted the gun out carefully.

The man walked unhurriedly around the pond, and Sam’s hands dropped. Dean stayed on alert.

“It’s okay, Dean,” the man called out in a vaguely familiar voice.

“Who are you?” Dean growled. “I’ve got a gun.”

“Oh, I know you do,” the man replied, steadily moving closer, his hands high in the air.

“It’s Chuck!” Sam exclaimed, long before Dean’s vision cleared.

“Chuck?”

“Yeah,” the man said. “Can you put the gun down now?”

He was close enough for Dean to see, and he looked just as he had forty years ago. “What are you doing here?” Dean blurted. 

Chuck lowered his hands. Dean watched as the man found an old stump just the right height to lean back against. He crossed his legs at his ankles. His shirt was so white, Dean squinted as the sunlight gleamed against it. His black shoes were shiny new despite the mud surrounding the pond. 

“Let’s just say it was God’s idea.”

Dean moved the gun out in front of him, and Chuck held his hands up higher. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!”

That seemed to calm Dean, diminish some of his tension. “Why are you here?” He asked.

“You asked,” Chuck shrugged. He held out a hand, but remained relaxed against the stump. His voice softened. “Give me the gun now, Dean.”

“What?” Dean’s eyes grew wide.

“You changed,” Sam interrupted. He stood up from the bank and walked toward Chuck.

“Sam, no,” Dean warned. He clutched the Colt tighter, held it up with Chuck in its sights.

Sam ignored him. “You were wearing blue yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Dean asked. “What do you mean, yesterday?”

Sam turned his attention to his brother. “At the river yesterday. When Jesse needed help, Chuck was wearin’ blue.”

Dean narrowed his eyes and looked passed Sam to where the gun still focused on Chuck. “How did you find us?”

“Sam talks to God a lot,” Chuck said. “Early on, when you fell down that cliff. Every time you scrape another mark on your arm. Most nights before you eat. Yesterday he said he didn’t care who saw what he could do any more, as long as the little boy lived.” Chuck paused until Dean stopped staring at his brother and returned his attention to him. “I’ve been waiting a long time to hear from you.”

“Forty years,” Dean whispered.

“Forty years of immortality, Dean,” Chuck clarified. “You chose the world over your brother one time, and you’ve spent forty years trying to make up for it. How does it feel?”

Dean looked at his brother again, then down at the Colt in his hand. Some time in the last couple of minutes he’d lowered the weapon into his lap. One bullet, that was all he had.

“Like an unending death,” he whispered. “Only Sam. Only Sam makes it worth it.”

“So, are you done with it then? Done with the penance, and the self-righteousness?” Chuck walked purposely toward him and took the Colt from his hand. “Are you ready to live again? You’ve done your time here. It’s time to move on if you’re ready.”

“What about Sam? Will he still be like this?” 

“What does it matter? You will be there to help him either way. That is the only guarantee I can give you,” Chuck replied. He studied the Colt closely as he spoke, giving Dean the illusion of privacy to consider.

“He deserves better,” Dean said, watching Chuck click open the cylinder and inspect its contents.

“He deserves to be happy,” Chuck countered, still not looking up. “He’s happy when you are. Sad when you’re sad.” The cylinder clicked closed again and Chuck turned his face to Dean. “Be happy, Dean.”

“I shouldn’t dictate his life,” Dean growled.

Chuck grinned. “Finally, you’ve learned something. You haven’t dictated his life in a long time, Dean. Did it ever occur to you that Sam didn’t want to remember everything? That maybe he made his own bargain?”

“What?” Dean gasped. That word was half his vocabulary right now.

Chuck’s smile faded. He leaned closer to Dean and whispered conspiratorially, “Sam remembers everything he wanted to remember. And he got your undivided attention as a lucky happenstance in the long run. I’d say it’s all worked out better for him than it has for you. It really is time now though, Dean, those men aren’t far off.”

“Wha…what do you say, S-Sam?” Dean asked. The words caught in his throat. 

Sam smiled, his dimples deep and understanding. He walked over to Dean and pulled him into a hug. Only in private were Sam’s arms usually this comforting. Dean closed his eyes so he could fully appreciate the sensation. “Shh. I’m ready, Dean. Everything is gonna be okay,” he whispered in his brother’s ear.

Dean fought back a sob, resolutely ignoring the tears streaming down his cheeks. And the trembling in his shoulders. He heard voices in the distance now, not close enough to make out words, but definitely voices. 

Chuck approached, holding up the index and middle finger of each hand and reaching for their foreheads. A tranquil smile graced his face. 

Dean wondered momentarily what Clark would find when the mob reached the pond. He closed his eyes and focused on the comforting words Sam was whispering in his ear:

“We’re going to a good place, Dean. A place where we can settle down and stay forever…

_ fin _

**Author's notes:** First, I want to thank the very lovely [staysthecourse](http://staysthecourse.livejournal.com) for creating such fabulous artwork. And for having so much patience with me. I'm really excited about it, go look! [Click Here!](http://staysthecourse.livejournal.com/7636.html)

And my eternal and ongoing thanks to my beta, [arliss](http://arliss.livejournal.com) , whom I can always count on for honest advise and great support. A pat on the back when I need it, and a kick in the butt when that will better serve the purpose!

This tale was inspired by John Steinbeck's _Of Mice and Men_ , but is not a retelling.


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